Once again my weary spindleshanks, whose memory was better than mine, left me next to the car, which I’d parked near the bus station. I went to the hotel without thinking about dangers of any kind. I took my lenses out, put my pyjamas on and got into bed, something I’d never done in daytime except when I was ill. But now my body was pleading for rest, needing to recover from all the tension, to go to sleep without thinking about anything as I tried to make sure that the images of Sandra looking at me through the bus window would upset me as little as possible.
Sandra
It wasn’t until we left Dianium and got onto the motorway that I noticed the passenger sitting next to me. I’d been absorbed in my thoughts while the lights of dawn, these lights scattered among the clouds, were fading. I was looking at Julián until I couldn’t see him any more. It made me sad to lose sight of him for ever and, I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop staring at the cravat at his neck. I had to breathe deeply. I couldn’t avoid knowing how skinny his arms were. He was very careful not to take his shirt off in front of me in his room, but I could feel them when I accidentally touched him, and I saw the arsenal of medicines he had to take in the bathroom. He was on his last legs yet he wasn’t afraid, and I don’t think that fear respects age. For me, coming to the end of the journey was scarier than the danger I’d faced when I was in the hands of the Brotherhood. I was much more afraid of normality, of everyday life, in which I had no means of earning a living. However, I wasn’t the same idiot who’d arrived in Dianium last September when I thought the world owed me something. Now I felt something different, something more bitter and yet more comforting. I wouldn’t know how to explain it. When we said goodbye, I was about to hug Julián, to press him against me, but then I thought it wouldn’t be good for either of us. What’s good about saying goodbye? The man at my side must have been about twenty-five and had gone to sleep as soon as he sat down. Now his head was resting on my shoulder and his legs were so sprawled out that there was hardly any space for mine. I tipped his head to the other side and he came back to me for support, but I wasn’t going to put up with that so I woke him up. He looked at me in surprise, as if I’d suddenly turned up in his bed, until he got his bearings.
“Sorry, I was out clubbing last night.”
I gave him the slightest smile, to forgive him but not encourage him. I didn’t feel like talking to him. I wanted to think about the Norwegians, about what they’d be doing today, about how they’d be taking my escape. It would be impossible for them to find me since they had no idea where I lived and they’d have too much work trying to find out. If they felt threatened, it would be easier for them to stampede off. If I told this boy at my side what had happened to me, he’d be gobsmacked. What would he know about Nazis?
I checked him out from the corner of my eye. He wouldn’t be anything like Alberto, not in a thousand years.
We stopped in Montilla to use the loo and have a bite to eat in the roadside café, which was crammed with travellers. My fellow passenger did his best to invite me for a Coca-Cola and said, yawning, that he thought I looked sad.
“You’re very observant,” I said putting paid, to Coca-Cola and conversation. “What I like most in the world right now is being sad.”
Julián
I was paying the hotel by the week and, with the last payment, I told Roberto I was leaving the room. He was surprised that I should be leaving a suite for which I was paying a price so low that it was bordering on the ridiculous, and tried to explain to me that if I did a comparison with other hotels I’d see what a privileged client I was, and the disagreeable incident that had been the cause of my leaving a normal room could have happened anywhere, but he, personally, had undertaken to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again and, as I could see, it hadn’t happened again. I understood that this was low season and it was his job to keep clients, come what may. It was better to have a suite occupied at the price of a double interior room than letting it gather dust.
I had to interrupt his description of the marvels I was unwittingly enjoying in the hotel to tell him that it wasn’t a matter of money. I was leaving town. Of course if I was going to stay longer I wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving the hotel. My holidays were coming to an end and I was returning to my country. Roberto was baffled. We old people had all the holidays in the world, but he didn’t say anything. He knew very well that he had to keep his curiosity to himself. I told him I was leaving the hire car too and that I had returned to the room a blanket I’d borrowed in case of emergency, and a towel. I’d be taking a taxi to the airport.
Roberto got them to bring down my luggage and insisted on calling a taxi for me, but I refused very firmly. I told him I preferred to stop one in the street because I had to kill time before the plane left. There was no way I wanted them to locate the taxi driver later and ask where he’d taken me.
“I’m sorry,” I said jokingly, “but this is my last wish.”
Thus it was that I walked out of the Costa Azul at eleven in the morning with my bag hanging from my shoulder and dragging a suitcase on wheels.
Once I was far enough away from the hotel to be sure that no one was following me, I stopped a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the Tres Olivos old people’s home. On the way, I looked back several times but saw nothing. My decision had taken them by surprise, when Tony wasn’t in the hotel, so they had no time to get their act together and find some way of keeping tabs on me.
This time when I arrived at Tres Olivos I sent the taxi away.
I liked the look of the garden. There were several people like me, all very rugged-up, playing pétanque, deliberating about whether one of them was clumsier than another and chatting about football. I went to the office and once again found the buxom lass I’d seen the previous time.
She pretended she didn’t remember me, but she did remember. I didn’t understand why she was denying it, unless she’d got into the habit of saying no to everything from the outset.
I was clear. I told her I didn’t want to be a burden for my daughter and if they could give me a good price from now until I died, and if they gave me the room that my friend Salva had occupied, I’d stay there with them. She opened her mouth and then closed it again.
“You’re very attractive and very intelligent and I’d like to spend the rest of my days in a place where I could see you. That would bring a lot of joy to my life.”
“Good grief, you’ve got the gift of the gab too, just like Salva.”
“Did Salva also stay here so he could see you?”
“That’s why they’re all here,” she said and burst out laughing.
“That room’s been occupied for a week,” she added, a little more seriously now. “But I’ll see what I can do to change things and get you in there. My name’s Pilar.”
I’d just entered into real senility. I was in Pilar’s hands. Pilar had started to use the familiar tu form with me as soon as she knew I was hers. One more point notched up to Pilar. My pleasure. This was just what I needed, a Pilar, the pétanque and people who’d lived their lives and were still living out the bonus they had left.
I sat down on a bench and waited for Pilar to sort out the matter of my room. Then she walked past, right in front of me, like a vision, as if I were asleep and dreaming about the events and characters of those days and meaninglessly mixing them up. I saw, I repeat, I saw her walking right in front of me, going towards the grove of trees: Elfe.
Once I’d reacted, I went out after her but Pilar stopped me.
“Where are we off to in such a hurry?”
“I thought I recognized someone.”
“Well, you’ll have time for that. Nobody ever leaves here.” She didn’t laugh, as one might expect. “Now we’re going to move you into Salva’s room. You’re in luck. And I’ll show you round a little.”
A chambermaid was just finishing tidying up the room. I left my suitcase in a corner and the bag on top of a small writing desk. The window was open. The air coming
in was wafting away the humours of the last occupant and Salva’s unseen presence was filtering in.
The installations weren’t fantastic. There weren’t many young oldies, so the tennis court and paddle tennis court were superfluous. The kitchen was clean and the best thing was an indoor swimming pool, a bit on the small side, which was the pride and joy of the home. Pilar assured me that once I tried it I wouldn’t want to get out, but Swedish gymnastics suited me quite well and I wasn’t sure whether I’d dare to change.
“Did Salva swim here?”
“No. He said he had more faith in the gym exercises he did. Swedish gymnastics, I think it was.”
I was talking to Pilar, looking at her and paying attention to her words, but I was still thinking about Elfe.
I was about to ask Pilar whether there was a German woman in the home, my age more or less, a former alcoholic or ongoing alcoholic called Elfe and, if so, who’d brought her here. But I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag as soon as I arrived.
She was right, this comely lady. I’d have time. Lunchtime was upon us. I certainly hadn’t expected this. They hadn’t killed her but had locked her away. Basically, killing was more awkward than locking her up in this reservation where anything she said could be taken as a flight of imagination.
I didn’t have time to open my suitcase as the smells of soup and fish and the clatter of dishes were coming from the dining room. When I went in, I was a little hesitant because they all knew where to sit and I didn’t want to take somebody’s place and then have to stand up again. I waited, trying to spot a free place and hoping to see Elfe at one of the tables.
A thickset man signalled to me to come and sit next to him. He prattled on and on while we were eating. It all went in one ear and out the other, as I was so intent on watching for Elfe’s arrival. How far away Sandra and her future son seemed now. She’d been a gift from the gods, like all the other gifts life had given me. Not everyone had been as favoured as I had been. I’d told my daughter that I’d discovered a sort of hotel for people of my age and that I was staying on another month. Unfortunately the owners of the little house I liked so much had let it out to someone else and I didn’t feel like looking any more. She’d have to agree to stay in a hotel when she came to visit. I also told her that I missed her, but it was good to be giving each other a bit of space.
When dessert came, I told the stocky man that a friend of mine had asked me to give a message to a woman called Elfe, a German woman with certain problems.
“Sometimes she comes to eat and sometimes she doesn’t. You know what I mean.” He made an elbow-bending gesture.
Sandra
I was sad for a while. It was the only way I had to retain everything that had happened in Dianium and of not forgetting Alberto or Julián, or even the Norwegians, or the terrible time I’d had in that upstairs room at Villa Sol. It was on the right as you went up the stairs, ten metres down the passageway, ten metres sounding with different kinds of footsteps, which drilled into my brain. More or less opposite was the bathroom, and I remember throwing up in that handbasin decorated with beautiful yellow sunflowers and how I was terrified at having soiled it, and because I didn’t have the strength to escape. Now I knew how important it was not to let yourself get weak, not to let yourself be intimidated or manipulated. It wasn’t easy to avoid it but I knew the consequences of innocence. Now I knew that anyone can be an enemy.
When I got to Madrid, I went straight to my parents’ house. At any other time I couldn’t have borne the idea of what was in store for me there, but that seemed stupid now. My mother crying, my father giving advice, both of them yelling that the other one was wrong, a hot dinner, a few reproaches and a nice bed. I went into my room and left the backpack on the white cotton summer bedspread (my mother still hadn’t got out the eiderdown, as if, in their heart of hearts, they doubted that I’d be back). I took off the boots I’d bought in Dianium and looked around. My high-school books were still on the shelves. The posters, the adjustable table lamp, the work table, all of it had an adolescent air. My head started to get things clear. Obviously I’d come back in order to leave again.
It wasn’t hard. My sister managed to rent for a very good price a small space in a shopping centre and we set up a costume jewellery shop. It went so well we were even able to employ an assistant and I started paying off a flat. Santi came back into my life in a more prominent way than in the past. I appreciated qualities in him that I’d never even noticed before and I thought he could be a good father. You can wait for the perfect love all your life. Perfect love isn’t real, and nothing perfect is real, so our relationship didn’t have to be perfect either, and we limited it to seeing one another from time to time and taking Janín to the park together. I told him about half of what I’d gone through in those days that were so spooky and so cut off from everything, and I occasionally blurted out the name of the Eel, which I preferred to call him when I was talking to Santi so as to block out the emotion, to tone down what I felt for him because, moreover, Alberto was probably the illusion I’d needed to be able to stand the tension I’d had to deal with in Villa Sol. Yet his name wasn’t just a name. It was his dark-blue jacket, his creased shirt, the cigarette ash dropping on his moccasins, the long hair, the forehead reddened by the sea wind, his smell, his worried looks, and the voice squeezing itself under the door when he said I love you. Then nothing. He didn’t come back to the hospital or to Julián’s hotel room. I fled and he stayed. Santi was happy that I’d settled down and said that the past was the past. But he was wrong.
For a while I was tempted to go back to Dianium, to find him and get him out of my head one way or another, but then the baby and my work kept me busy all the time. The present was devouring me and sometimes it seemed that I’d turned the page… until I fell into bed completely done in at night and went to sleep. Then those days kept coming back, as fresh as today.
Julián
On my first day at the home, Elfe didn’t put in an appearance until night-time. I went to have some dinner, not because I wanted to but only so my pills wouldn’t play havoc with me and make me ill as soon as I arrived, and also in case I saw her.
Looking at the olive trees through the window, I thought about the bar with the set menus and the shabby suite at the Costa Azul. I thought about Sandra and the Eel. It all happened so recently and yet such a long time ago. When I decided to come here, I knew that this was a place where I could prowl around the past, because, when the body packs it in, we still have the power of the mind and imagination to recreate the best moments of our lives.
I was thinking about all this until I saw Elfe coming into the dining room, with a mad look on her face although she was certainly better groomed than she’d been the time I saw her in her own house, covered in vomit. Whatever she cared to say, nobody was going to take her seriously.
I signalled to her to come and sit with the thickset man and myself. We were starting to form a group.
She sat down and didn’t recognize me. How could she possibly recognize me? This woman had managed to live like a ghost.
“Elfe’s got some paintings in her room and they’re worth millions of euros. Isn’t that right, Elfe?” the man said, giving me a wink.
“A Picasso,” Elfe said, “a Degas and a Matisse, I think.”
Elfe sat there staring at the ceiling, trying to remember, and the man shook his head sorrowfully.
“It seems that all of us have come from a better life,” he commented, without the remotest suspicion that, in all probability, Elfe’s paintings were originals. Then Elfe asked with pitifully childish helplessness, “Do you know where my dog is?”
The man shot me a look saying she’s as mad as a hatter, not imagining that I knew where the dog was. It was in Frida’s house.
When we finished, I offered to see her to her room. When she opened the door, I saw the paintings hanging on the wall. They were so authentic they looked fake.
“Do
you want to have a drink?” she asked, putting her hand inside the wardrobe as if into a viper’s nest.
I left, shutting the door behind me. You should see what’s happening, Salva. You wouldn’t believe it.
It beggared belief too, a few days later, when a tall, stooped, ungainly man got out of a taxi pulling two suitcases on wheels behind him. I had some difficulty slotting Heim into the small garden of the home. And I had to struggle to make real the sight of Heim talking to Pilar.
So he’d had to abandon his beloved boat, the Estrella. That must certainly have been painful for him, but they would have convinced him that, given his alarming loss of faculties, he’d have to go into reclusion if he wanted to survive. And, evidently, more than anything else, he wanted to survive. Basically, he’d be thinking that, as a member of a superior race, he still had many years ahead of him, and he’d find some way to check his dementia. Would he know that Elfe was here too? How would Elfe react when she saw him?
There seemed to be no end to this. When I wasn’t going after them, they were coming to me; coming alive again for me. There was some reason for this. I felt that they were in my hands and that Salva’s spirit was guiding me.
When Pilar finally completed the formalities before leading Heim to his room, showing him the facilities, telling him the timetable, enquiring whether he was diabetic because of his meals, and asking all the other questions that had addled me at the start, I went to talk with her.
“A new resident.”
“Yes,” she said as she typed Heim’s file into the computer, under another name of course, and I had no wish to memorize it. “Let’s see if he’s a proper German and, unlike Elfe, comes to meals on time. What a nightmare of a woman!”
The Scent of Lemon Leaves Page 36
