Rain Over Madrid

by Andrés Barba

  This time, she elects to stick with Nelly, to protect herself from her by sticking close. She has the uneasy feeling that words have lost their force. She got that with Papá sometimes, too, as though, more than his daughter, she were his lover. But it was not a silent feeling, in fact quite the opposite; throughout his sickness, she heard a sort of muffled sound, like someone crunching through dry foliage, or rustling a newspaper, a sound older than herself, a sound that had traveled a very long time, entire summer afternoons (Nelly in the summertime—that blue bathing suit of hers), dresses like the one Nelly was now inspecting with a vague look of concentration (or was it displeasure?) in her eyes.

  “It’s hot in here, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” she replies; like Nelly, she has suddenly started to sweat beneath her coat.

  The heat prompts a kind of stupor, and they remove their coats in unison. As she’s taking hers off, she notices a woman who walked into the store with them. It’s as if something about her is a little off. She looks about forty, she is neither unattractive nor attractive—she has thin, almost washed-out lips void of lipstick; large, slightly startled-looking eyes that dart from side to side with astonishing speed; a big coat she hasn’t taken off despite the heat; and the tiny, nervous hands of a bird. Something is about to happen, she thinks. And then she’s sure—that woman is about to steal something. What makes her instinctively press against Nelly? There is something linear, like a chain of cause and effect—the urge to scream, to warn not the storekeepers but Nelly, or the thief herself, maybe. By her appearance, you’d never guess. She continues casually leaning over earrings and necklaces, wanders elsewhere a bit, returns to her original spot, from time to time taking refuge in the to-and-fro of other shoppers, as though using them as a barricade; she seems enveloped in a sort of cloud of dust.

  “You’re making me hot,” Nelly says.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Have you found anything?”

  “No, but there’s nothing here I like.”

  “Me, neither.”

  Then suddenly it happens, right before they walk out. They put their coats back on, and she sees the woman slip something up her sleeve, she can’t tell what; it’s an anxious move, extremely agile, like a magician’s sleight of hand. Did that just happen or not? What vanished? A pair of earrings, a necklace perhaps? The woman heads toward them, preparing to use them as cover on her way out. She can feel the contact of the woman behind her, almost pressing into Nelly, who hasn’t picked up on a thing, and as they reach the door, an employee stops all three of them and then turns straight to the woman.

  “Could you come with me for a moment, please?”

  “Who? Me?” asks Nelly.

  “No, not you. If you don’t mind,” he says, addressing the woman.

  “Why?”

  His expression has the mark of a hunter—the triumph, the lack of sensitivity, the contrived courtesy. The woman knows why, he knows why. She suddenly feels absurdly distressed, as though she herself were the thief—the knotted contraction of her throat, the wheeziness of her breath, the sudden pounding of her heart.

  “What’s going on?” asks Nelly.

  “You’re free to go, there’s nothing to worry about,” he responds, but when she turns to the woman, she sees that he’s grabbed her wrist, a seemingly banal gesture, almost genteel yet quietly rough, a fact that can be seen immediately in the painful contraction of the woman’s face.

  “You’re hurting me,” she whispers.

  “Come with me, please.”

  “I’m in a hurry, what do you want?” she asks in a desperate attempt to flee, continuing forward. His reply is no longer genteel.

  “You know perfectly well.”

  “Would you mind letting go of her arm?” Nelly asks, still oblivious to it all. Then it suddenly seems to dawn on her, perhaps upon looking at the woman. The whole scene is absurd, like during the final months of Papá’s life when from one moment to the next, in the middle of the most everyday of actions, there would suddenly be violence and shame, a fingering, a recognition of guilt; it’s a body language that she can feel as if she were making her way through a dark, unfamiliar room full of furniture and objects she trips over. What a farfetched world, she thinks. Then there comes a desperate look, or that’s what she thinks it is, from the woman. And a callous look, or that’s what she thinks it is, from Nelly.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  They turn and leave. She looks behind her for the last time to see the shop assistant leading the woman back into the store. Then, instantly, they are outside once more, back in the cold and joy of the snow. It’s starting to snow again. It strikes her as odd, the way the world immediately demands obedience to its designs.

  “She stole something, didn’t she?” Nelly asks.

  “I think so.”

  “But did you see it?”

  “I saw her over near the earrings, and then I saw her come over toward us, like she wanted to pretend all three of us were together.”

  Nelly walks in silence a few seconds, headed who knows where, simply out of nervousness, and she walks beside her. Is she indignant? Furious? It’s always the same with Nelly, it’s as though even at the most decisive moments, things just brush up against her, but their contact is never more than a light swaying. And she, too, touches her perhaps too lightly, perhaps she, too, is too alarmed to make more definitive contact. Why are they both so upset? I can’t feel sorry for everyone, I don’t have time for that, Nelly has said more than once. Am I supposed to apologize if my heart doesn’t bleed for every poor soul on the planet? At that moment, an attractive man passes and glances at Nelly with interest, an interest she doesn’t even register. She’s in her own world. Cowardice is a skill, is another thing she says. A mystifying declaration. All at once, she whirls sharply.

  “You’ve never stolen anything before, have you?”

  “Who, me?” she asks. Like on a test at school, her reply is intended to buy time, but Nelly takes it as a negation, and then she makes an even odder assertion.

  “Women’s obsession with stealing makes me sick.” She says it with real scorn, as though she herself were not a woman, or as though the comment were simply physical and what she can’t stand is their smell. The temperature has dropped with the snow yet again, and she can see the warm breath on Nelly’s lips. Her words, the words she has just spoken, hang in the air, like her breath, like a hot, damp truth. Women and their qualms about possession. Strange qualms about possession, like hidden defects buried deep in the roots of their flesh, defects that never yield to exhaustion, that are always present: the compulsive urge to possess, the inability to ever possess. Perhaps Nelly is actually—in that one way, despite everything else—more male. She herself, most certainly, is not. She is reckless when it comes to possession, feels it fitfully, as with all things that truly interest her, feels its violent impulse turn on and off, and yes, she most certainly has stolen. What would happen if she told Nelly now, right now, after what she’s just said? Her stealing might have been even pettier than the woman in the boutique’s, more pernicious. What would happen if she just said, flat out, I actually stole from you once? How would Nelly react?

  She remembers that Papá was still alive when it happened, that she’d stopped by Nelly’s for a visit, that Nelly had gone out and that she knew she wouldn’t be back for at least twenty minutes. It’s a persistent feeling—she remembers that she’s alone and that a strange sense of distress comes over her, that she goes into Nelly’s bedroom and opens one of her armoires. This is a forbidden act, an act of abject love. She remembers the feel of the little box where Nelly keeps her costume jewelry, remembers spreading it all out on the bed, bending over it, sitting on her heels. There are pieces she vaguely remembers and others she doesn’t recall ever having seen before: a pair of long earrings, a little bracelet, four rings, a black brooch with a whit
e circle in the middle and another, smaller, black circle inside of that. A fixation with the brooch flips on within her like a switch, automatic. She freezes. Could she say that to Nelly—I froze? Could she use those words, or would she need other words, vertiginous words, to explain why she felt compelled to put the brooch in her pocket, to wait there as though nothing had happened? Does it make sense to steal what is already hers? Because the brooch both is and is not hers, she is its natural owner, it’s hers in the projection of assets, in the already-possessing eyes of a legitimate heir. There has been a breach. Then, when Nelly gets back, she makes a hasty excuse and rushes outside, feeling the unbearable contact of the brooch. She takes it out, holds it in her hand—it’s lost its benign splendor but not its weight. Something in her has changed, in her and not in the brooch, it is she who wants to turn around, as though wishing to say to Nelly, Since you’re the one who brought all this on, it’s your fault.

  “Nelly . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me, what?”

  “Have you ever stolen anything?”

  Nelly stops suddenly in the middle of the street and turns to her, like an adult preparing to chastise a child. She thinks, She’s going to get mad now. She thinks she’s going to get mad as though she were already primed to feel Nelly’s violent indignation on her skin. This has happened on other occasions, too, always preceded by the same feeling she has now: a fear like a contagious shiver, the desire to be hated by her mother. Why does she want her mother to hate her? Maybe unconcealed hatred would be a sincere reaction, honest scrutiny, a form of loyalty. She can only be worthy of her love if she is worthy of her hate—a deranged thought, and yet having it there in the middle of the Calle Serrano, beneath the timidly falling snow seems, for some reason, to make it more tolerable.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  What did she do? What nerve did she touch? She touched off something by mistake. She knows, at that moment, she is absolutely certain that she has—something in Nelly seems to quiver, to rattle like a train. And from one second to the next, her expression becomes intense, strange.

  “Once. I stole once,” she replies. “Satisfied?”

  “No.”

  “End of story.”

  She has a powerful urge to touch her. Not a hug, not a kiss, not a caress, just a simple touch, and she’s about to do it, but then she hesitates, and her reach becomes an awkward, slightly ridiculous lunge, as though she were pretending to trip while standing still. She’s never seen Nelly give that look before; it’s not a compassionate look, not an ashamed look, not a furious look. There’s something detached about it, something calm, something animal, but like a tired animal that looks patronizingly on everything, even its own instincts. She needs to capture that look of Nelly’s, needs to devour it and then regurgitate it, to scrutinize it. She feels nothing, she thinks. Is that the case now, is that what has, perhaps, always been the case? It would be too simple to think that Nelly feels nothing, but in formulating the thought, there does appear to be an element of truth. To think that Nelly feels nothing is, in fact, the beginning of the true thought, the true concept, it is to put her hand on the doorknob and push the door open, and now she’ll walk through that door and see what’s in there. Today will be the day, she thinks, she’s sure, today will be the day, all she has to do is follow the course of that thought the way a lost hiker follows the course of a river.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she says as they both resume walking, but she instantly regrets her words; they don’t sound right. Nelly takes no time to react.

  “That’s exactly what you’ve been meaning to do since the moment you set eyes on me this morning, kid.”There is no trace of reproach in her reply, only, once again, detachment and the sound of Nelly’s heels, and her three-quarter-length coat flapping open and closed in its own strange, fascinating language. It’s odd—each of Nelly’s movements exhibits a peculiar sense of ownership. One time, her father made a surreal comment, when Nelly had left home and she asked him if she was coming back. She’ll come back, he said, because we belong to her. She thinks of that now, too. Silence is not an extension of anger. In fact, anger hasn’t even touched Nelly, not really. Silence, instead, is an extension of that assertion that brooks no failure: She’ll come back, because we belong to her.

  After that, they go to the restaurant. The white linen tablecloth, the four glasses all lined up in a row, the glimmering silverware, the menu printed on rough, off-white parchment that is pleasing to the touch, the steady stream of others’ conversations. They were both suddenly hungry, so Nelly brought her to a restaurant she liked and that she herself had never been to. There is a marvelous cavalcade of pleasures, a clean, sweet vibe, as though anything said there, any exchange, any conversation, even the most banal, would suddenly be made beautiful, as though in a lovely daze. That’s exactly what she feels now, after the uneasy conversation that brought them there—respite, as though all the lovely things in this world had graciously lined up to offer their gifts in compensation. Perhaps it’s also Nelly’s prudence at not having argued a point that’s impossible to resolve. Is there any way to know if people’s different qualities are virtues or defects? What seemed like an infuriating defect in Nelly twenty minutes ago is now an extraordinary virtue—her methodical analysis of the menu (Don’t even think of ordering the ravioli, that’s the one thing they don’t do well here), her leisurely selection, the fun they have glancing furtively at what the people around them have ordered, the excellent wine, the temporary suspension of Christmas madness that is only noticed now that it’s been neutralized. She’d like to ask forgiveness. Ask forgiveness and be grateful. But even more satisfying is to curb that impulse and concentrate instead on the physical: the pleasure of hunger about to be satisfied, the faint aroma of hot bread wafting through the restaurant, her glass of wine. She tastes it with a slow, slightly dramatic fake-expert flourish and nods her approval to the waiter, who smiles. Customs, we have too few customs, she thinks. Papá liked that quote. Who was it from?

  “Customs, we have too few customs,” she says aloud, happily, in a singsong, learned-by-heart tone, like a somewhat out-of-place nineteenth-century actress.

  “Who said that?”

  “Papá.”

  Nelly gives a shocked smile.

  “He did? I never would have thought.”

  “It’s a quote, actually, I can’t remember who said it first, he used to say it when he was happy that we were all together.”

  His private words, private quotes, private thoughts, she knows them, has encountered them many times, has lived with them. At that moment, she sees the subtle, roundabout nature of that quote, which is a tribute to Nelly, like using a third party to let someone else know that they are loved. What’s this business of going around announcing “I love you” all the time? How can anyone have the nerve to say such a thing? Nelly once said. The deceased retreats slightly, for the first time in four months. She notices but feels no guilt, as though life, and not the deceased, had the delicate, graceful hand; the deceased recedes in the most ordinary of ways: with the arrival, finally, of their food—vegetable lasagna for Nelly, gnocchi in cream sauce for her.

  “We still need something for Aunt Lu.”

  “We’ll go to ABC Serrano after this, we’ll find something there,” Nelly says, aborting the topic.

  It is both typical and familiar, this way of avoiding the unpleasant. She concentrates on her lasagna. Nelly never pays attention to anyone when she eats, instead draws herself in like an animal intent only on its own pleasure; her mannerisms become even more refined, a mix of gestures—some instinctual, like a filly, others aristocratic, like an empress. Perhaps, she thinks, bemused, no two things have more in common—a filly and an empress. Now she, too, concentrates—as though imitating Nelly—on her gnocchi, on the fresh,
full pleasure of their texture, the way they almost melt in her mouth. She orders more wine. She likes drinking. Sometimes her compulsion to drink is like a nervous tic, and it always happens with wine. Is this reasonable, to suddenly be overflowing with pleasure, feel the first stages of inebriation, rejoice at being alive and being here, at being able to inspect Nelly’s face unnoticed, with impunity? Finally, she does—it is a classic face, really. That of an emperor’s wife, of Caesar’s daughter. Once, in the Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, in one of the halls, she was shocked to note the uncanny resemblance between one of the busts and Nelly’s face. It was nothing as simple as physical resemblance—though, in fact, there was an element of that, too: the delicate outline of brows and lips, the fullness of cheekbones, mellowing in the cheeks, all coming together in the strong chin—but something more abstract, harder to define: a sort of authority.

  “A man once killed himself over me, I think about that a lot,” she says out of the blue.

  “Excuse me?”

  Nelly dabs her lips with her napkin and takes a sip of wine, arranges her blouse. She glances at the waiter and beckons him with a wave.

  “Are any of your desserts homemade?”

  “The pannacotta, it’s excellent.”

  “We’ll have one, and two spoons.”

  She turns back to her, takes out a cigarette. Nelly smokes only during dramatic pauses. Her day-to-day life is full of dramatic pauses, as though she constantly needed to demarcate, to keep the lurching boundaries of things in check.