Senora Blinder swivelled on her heels, turning her back on him, and then swung round again, to go towards Rosa, evidently nervous. Rosa allowed a sob to escape her. Senora Blinder put her arms around her.
It was probably the first time she had ever embraced her, since Rosa took a rapid pace backwards, either in fear or surprise. The two then stood outside his field of vision.
He descended a few more steps, and carefully craned his neck forwards. Yes, they were definitely embracing. Actually, only Senora Blinder was really doing the embracing. Rosa's arms were dangling at her sides.
"Who is the father?"
"I can't tell you that, Senora..."
Senora Blinder detached herself and, without letting her go completely, looked her in the eyes. Suddenly she looked very serious, as if Rosa were playing her a wild card or making a bad joke.
"Rosa," she said, "I could have told you to pack your bag and move on, now couldn't I? Yet, in spite of all this, I'm still here and I want to help you."
"If you tell me to, I'll leave right away..."
"Don't you ever say such a thing in front of me again! Are we clear?" Senora Blinder replied, making the sign of the cross.
"Yes, Senora. Nor would I have..."
"That's enough. Let's begin again. Who is the father?"
"Israel, Senora."
"Who is Israel?"
"The fellow who lives here, on the corner, Senora... He lives at number 1525, on the fourth floor."
"Who lives there on the fourth floor?"
"Israel, Senora. I'm sure you know him actually, he told me that you always greet one another as you pass by on the street, and that one time you stopped and spoke to him. Do you remember the boyfriend I once had, called Maria?"
"Maria?"
`Jose Maria, but I called him Maria. Israel told me that on one occasion he spoke to you over that matter with the police, who came round to check if..."
"Israel Vargas!"
"Yes, Senora."
"Unbelievable..."
Senora Blinder made another half-turn and crossed the bottom of the staircase, going towards her room, walking slowly and thoughtfully. Maria backed off and managed to escape by a hair's breadth. A second later, Rosa also passed by. No doubt, Senora Blinder had signalled for her to draw closer.
"Very well, we need to talk to him," said Senora Blinder. "I assume he will take responsibility..."
Maria didn't listen any further. He retreated one step at a time, like a solid shadow, and shut himself in his room. His walls had just collapsed in on him.
His head was spinning. His nausea was not the result of having been "absent" for so long: it was his re-entry into that world which shattered him. Rosa pregnant... and by none other than Israel. If only Senora Blinder had thrown her out onto the street... After all it had been a long time since he'd even thought of her... He would have preferred to wake one morning to the news that Rosa was no longer there than to learn of her pregnancy.
He had worked hard with all his might to forget her and, in the process, had transformed himself into another man. And he was the better for it. Of the old Maria, he had conserved the agility - even though he was no longer as strong, nor as robust - and all the rest had changed. He was more spiritual: he could have borne anything. His goal in staying in the house was no longer to escape imprisonment. This was a matter he no longer even thought about. It would have been more appropriate for him simply to disappear. It was enough for him to set foot upon this peak of human indifference for a pregnancy to come along and sabotage it all! Rage and pain rose through his body like hot flames. He felt indignant, disgusted and at the same time fearful. Had he really learned anything about either himself or the house?
What about Senora Blinder, for example? What did he really know about her? He knew nothing at all beyond what he could imagine. The proof was that Senora Blinder had just demonstrated herself to be gentle, understanding and even fair towards Rosa, rather than cold and rejecting. That very night Senora Blinder had even, after telling the news to her husband (who was indeed cold and scornful), defended Rosa with a set of arguments as moving as they were fruitless, a force of nature before which her husband could do little else but weaken:
"Do what you like."
The next day it appeared that Senora Blinder had indeed gone to speak to Israel. Rosa anxiously awaited her return. When she got back, Senora Blinder slipped an arm about her waist and swept her out of Maria's sight, saying:
"We're going to have to take charge of this ourselves. To start with..."
At that instant, Maria took his decision. The same night he rose and got dressed, went downstairs with his shoes in his hand, took the key to the kitchen door, opened it, went out, locked it again from the outside, put on his shoes, crossed the side garden to the kitchen gate, opened it, went out, locked it again from the outside, crossed the street and disappeared into the darkness. He was absolutely certain no one had seen him.
It must have been about three in the morning, and it was very cold. The streets were deserted. From time to time a car passed by in the distance. Maria had the sensation he had been walking those streets the previous day... but at another hour. He didn't register that he was out of doors until he went into the locksmith's. In some sense, being outside was hardly all that important, after all. What mattered was being inside. It even (in a barrio hitherto unknown to him) seemed curious that he had gone straight to the nearest locksmith, a locksmith which remained open round the clock, as if he'd ended up knowing the barrio from within the villa.
A man advanced in years, with the aspect of a retired crook, looked suspiciously at him all the time he made a copy of the key. Maria held his gaze. (Between them there flashed the sparks made by the key-cutter.) Eventually Maria made his way back to the villa. Once inside the tradesmen's entrance, he took off his shoes and repeated the same careful actions he had performed in leaving, with a brief pause in the kitchen to select his dinner.
That was on 12th August. The rest followed naturally. Next morning, on 13th August, he would call her by phone and tell her he wanted to see her. He could only leave the house at dawn, which was what he would do that very 13th August, and spend the night out on the street until he went to his assignation with Rosa - some time either in the morning or the afternoon - in some place yet to be determined, after which he would bid her farewell and return to the house at dawn on the 14th August. He knew very well what he was going to say to her. It would mark the end of their going round in circles.
"Don't spin me any more twisters, Rosa. Would you like us to meet, yes or no?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"Well... where would you like to meet up?"
"The little hotel on the Bajo?"
"I don't think so, Maria. Now that things are..." she interrupted herself.
"Different?" finished Maria sadly.
Rosa paused a while and, as was her habit each time a difficult question came up, changed the subject:
"Would you like us to meet in La Cigale?"
"So what's wrong with the little hotel, that you don't want to meet there any more? I'm not about to bite you..."
"Of course I know you're not going to bite me," Rosa laughed (mirthlessly). "The problem is that..."
"Forget it. I'll be waiting for you at the entrance."
"Of La Cigale?"
"Of the little hotel."
"Don't you prefer La Cigale?"
"No. I don't want to meet in La Cigale. I don't want anyone to see us. I'll wait for you at the entrance to the little hotel at... well, you tell me."
"At five o'clock."
"As late as that?" Maria said, then straight away realized that it was all the same to him, whatever time they met: in any case he was going to have to spend the rest of the day out on the street, until night fell. "It's fine. At five o'clock sharp," he added, "I'll wait for you at the entrance. See you tomorrow."
"Maria?"
"Yes?"
"No, nothing...
"
A pause followed.
"See you tomorrow," repeated Maria.
Rosa asked him a question:
"Are you all right?"
"I'm OK. What about you?" said Maria.
"Me too."
" "Good. I'm glad for you...
Another pause.
"Good, until tomorrow..."
"Until tomorrow, my..." and Maria sharply interrupted himself.
27
Rosa didn't show.
Maria spent twenty minutes waiting for her in the doorway to the little hotel, another ten minutes on the opposite pavement, and still a further twenty minutes in pacing to and fro.
He was beside himself with rage.
He was on the point of leaving when he suddenly caught sight of Israel.
It was such a monstrous coincidence that it could only have occurred in order to justify and compensate for the fact that Rosa had stood him up.
Israel was standing by a newspaper kiosk, studying the cover of a magazine. He had one hand stuffed in his pocket, where he was jingling his keys or some loose change, while the other hand was busy for real: it scratched the nape of his neck, his nose, adjusted his rugby shirt, held down the magazine cover each time the wind lifted it... Maria didn't need to pause to think. He crossed the street and went straight over to him.
He stopped beside him. At that very instant Israel had finished reading and had straightened himself up ready to move on, but the cover of another magazine, hung directly below the first, caught his attention. The first one was all about weapons, the second about hunting. Maria smelled his odour - a powerful blast of pine combined with armpit sweat - and examined the stubble of his hairline, recently trimmed around his nape and over his ears. His neck was considerably wider than his head and his ears even smaller than his eyes. The kiosk's owner surfaced, counting a roll of banknotes. Israel pulled himself together and went slowly on his way.
Maria followed him. It was a Friday and the Bajo was full of cars hell-bent on escaping the city. People came and went, some hurrying too rapidly and others making no haste at all, as if they were all equally lost. Israel proceeded in a straight line. He held his elbows out, obliging anyone coming towards him to move out of his way, but it was clear he had no particular destination in mind. He was taking a stroll, perhaps killing time until it was his customary dinner time. Twilight was already setting in, but fortunately Israel continued following a path that took him away from his house, towards which Maria could not have followed him, for fear of being spotted by one of the builders at his old building site, or by the doorman, or even by Rosa... He was forgetting that by now it would be very difficult for anyone to recognize him: he was thin, pale, with long hair down to his shoulders, and several months' growth of beard. So it was that Israel, awoken by Maria's glare fixed on the back of his neck, turned round and stared back at him.
They had reached a street corner. Maria, who had followed behind at a distance of six or seven yards, held his gaze as he caught up with him, without allowing his pace to show the least hesitation or acceleration. His mind was a blank, but he approached the man as if he knew exactly what he was going to do. For his part, Israel didn't recognize him, but was uncomfortably aware that something wasn't going quite right.
"Israel."
"Do I know you?"
These were the only words they exchanged. All of a sudden, Maria grabbed him by the neck, dragged him over towards a building, and shoved his head against the wall with all his strength. Israel was left dumbfounded. Maria grasped his neck with his two hands, staring him in the eyes. He had thrown his body weight well forwards, and was pushing out from where he had a foot planted firmly on the ground, to reinforce the pressure through his hands. He was so enraged that blood started to trickle from his nostrils. The blood wet his lips. He exhaled and Israel's face became spattered with tiny red splashes, some of them assuming the shape of a tear.
Maria looked left and right and experienced the strangeness of killing someone in the middle of the street, without anyone else being the wiser. Israel was offering no resistance at all, other than that naturally offered by a neck as broad and tough as his own: the most he could do was struggle to keep his eyes open; his pupils were rolling, floating in their orbs without focusing on anything...
Maria dragged him back a little way, and hammered his head into the wall once more. This time, the blow was far more violent than the previous one.
Israel closed his eyes. The weight of his body doubled at least. That was when Maria loosened the pressure in his hands.
After which he fled. He stopped only when he ran out of breath. He had the impression that everything had happened very rapidly and that he'd fled the scene of the crime so fast that Israel, now a mile or two behind him, was still breathing his last.
He sat down on a doorstep, in a block in the middle of a darkened street. A man came past, carrying a pizza in its cardboard box on the palm of one hand.
"D'you have the time?" asked Maria.
"No."
The man went on by.
Maria got to his feet, put one hand in his pocket and felt for the key to the villa. Then he sat himself down again.
A tramp approached, pushing a supermarket trolley loaded with cardboard he had collected and, without pausing on his journey, called out:
"D'you have the time?"
"No," replied Maria, and paused to wonder why a tramp would need to know the time. Probably the pizza delivery man was asking himself the same question about him. It had to be around eight - or possibly nine - o'clock at night.
The door before which he was seated opened unexpectedly, and a young woman almost tripped over him. She backed off in panic and shielded herself behind a skinny and pallid youth dressed all in black, with a woollen hat embellished with the slogan PORN in red pulled down over his eyebrows.
"Excuse me," the young guy said to him.
Maria stood up to make way for them.
The young couple made their exit one behind the other, and disappeared rapidly into the distance, arm in arm and whispering. Maria took note of where the girl had been looking: she had been staring at his nose. He touched it with a finger. Over his upper lip was a cascade, or a Hitler moustache, of dried blood. He tried to clean it off with saliva, but ended up having to wash it with water from the pavement gutter. He rubbed the cuff of his shirtsleeve across his mouth, drying it off, and walked over to the corner.
The next time he asked for the time, already in the neighbourhood of the villa, he was told it was three o'clock. Until that point, he had been walking without any sense of direction, while deliberately singling out the streets with the most traffic on them, on which he felt he could pass by without arousing the least suspicion - or less than on emptier side streets, with or without lighting. Ahead or behind, along the avenues, there were great pools of light drawing people in like moths around a flame: a cinema, a shopping mall, a discotheque, where people gathered like insects. Sometimes the point of convergence was wide, sometimes less so, but it was always surrounded by dusk or darkness.
On one occasion, if he wasn't mistaken, he had passed by that way arm in arm with Rosa, window-shopping and finding something to say about whatever they saw. Rosa enjoyed comparing the price of clothes with the cost of public services, or with food; she grew indignant as she drew up the list of those items she knew she could purchase in the supermarket and compared them with the price of a pair of jeans, or when she attempted to make the equation between that of a pair of tights and a dozen - or maybe even fifteen - trips on the bus (depending, obviously, on the value of the tights) or the cost of a month's supply of gas (whenever she found cheap tights, the cost of gas seemed to her to go up).
For a while he'd been walking along, fumbling with a piece of paper in his pocket. He took it out. It was a tenpeso note. The note must have been there since before any of all this began...
The first thing that occurred to him was to ring Rosa. For that he needed coins. A fe
w yards further on there was a McDonald's. He entered, went up to one of the tills and took his place in the queue. When his turn came up, he asked for one of the set meals and to have his change in coins. Then he sat down at the one empty table, and devoured his hamburger with its microwaved chips without lifting his head, intimidated by the hustle and bustle, uncomfortable beneath the bright lights, paranoid at the difference between him and the dozens of young people coming and going from the adjacent cinema, and squeezed out by a large family surging by with their trays, in search of a place to sit down.
He got up and left. In the doorway there was a public telephone. He dialled the number for the villa and in less than three rings he heard Rosa's voice:
"Hello?"
"Rosa, it's me. Whatever happened? You didn't turn up.
"Maria, I'm so sorry. I couldn't make it. I wanted to come - I was going to come - but the Senora had booked me a doctor's appointment and I couldn't refuse to go."
"Why was she taking you to the doctor?"
"Oh it was nothing... just a check-up..."
"Did you feel ill?"
"No, no, I had some kind of a bug and... what do I know about it? Lately, the Senora seems to be looking after me as if I were made of gold. So you went, did you?"
"Why wouldn't I go? I needed to speak to you. I was waiting for you."
"What about tomorrow?"
"I don't know if I can make it tomorrow... It was supposed to be today..."
"Where are you? I can hear a racket..."
"Out on the street."
"Ah, now I can make it out. Come to think of it, it has to be the first time there's been a background noise when you've rung me. Where were you calling from before, from a private house?"
"Yes...
"I swear I'd reached the point where I was certain that..." Rosa began, before interrupting herself again.
"What had you come to believe?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all, don't listen to me..." said Rosa. She sounded disappointed, as if Maria's love for her would have been greater within the walls of a prison than out on the street.
Rage Page 14
