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  ‘I remember my return to Barcelona very well. The languid fatigue of the train – you can’t imagine the quantity of shawls, hats, gloves, and veils we needed in those days for a four-hour trip. I remember my father’s large car waiting for us at the station; we bounced on its seats in our fur coats and the noise of its motor deafened us. I’d spent an entire year without hearing Román’s name and then each tree, each drop of light – that baroque, unmistakeable light of Barcelona – carried his scent to me until my nostrils dilated in anticipation …

  ‘My father embraced me, very moved – because, like Ena, I’m the only daughter among several sons. As soon as I had the chance, I told him I wanted to continue my piano and voice lessons. I believe it was the first thing I said to him.

  ‘“Fine. Aren’t you ashamed, even a little, to run after that boy this way?”

  ‘My father’s eyes blazed with anger. Don’t you know my father? He has the most sullen and also the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen.

  ‘“So there’s no other man for you? So it has to be you, my daughter, who pursues a fortune hunter?”

  ‘My father’s words wounded all my lover’s pride in the object of my affections. I defended Román. I spoke of his brilliance, his splendid generosity. My father listened to me calmly, and then he put that receipt in my hands.

  ‘“You can look at it when you’re alone. I don’t want to be there when you do.”

  ‘We never spoke of Román again. Our soul’s reactions are curious. I’m sure that, secretly, I could have got past that new insult. With the eyes of my family watching me, it seemed impossible to continue showing my love for that man. It was like a moral shrug of my shoulders. I married the first suitor my father liked, I married Luis …

  ‘Today, as you know, Andrea, I’ve forgotten the whole story, and I’m content.’

  It embarrassed me to listen to her. I, who heard every day the most vulgar words in our language, and listened unperturbed to Gloria’s conversations filled with the most barbaric materialism – I blushed at that confession of Ena’s mother and began to feel uncomfortable. In those days I was bitter and intransigent, like youth itself. Everything in the story that spoke of failure and repression repelled me. The fact that she would recount her miseries to another person almost made me feel ill.

  When I looked at her, I saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

  ‘But how am I going to explain these things to Ena, Andrea? How am I going to tell someone I love so much what I might have said in a confessional, devoured by anguish, what I’ve told you? … Ena knows me only as a symbol of serenity, of clarity … I know she couldn’t bear for this image that she’s deified to have its feet made of the clay of passions and madness. She would love me less … And every atom of her love is vital to me. She’s the one who has made me the person I am now. Do you think she could destroy her own creation? … The work between us has been so delicate, so silent and profound!’

  Her eyes darkened, her long cat’s pupils contracted. Her face had a vegetal, extremely delicate quality: in an instant it would age, becoming covered with subtle wrinkles, or it would open like a flower … I didn’t understand how I could have thought she was ugly.

  ‘Look, Andrea. When Ena was born, I didn’t love her. She was my first child, but I hadn’t wanted her. The early days of my marriage were difficult. It’s curious the extent to which two people who live together and don’t understand each other can be strangers. Fortunately for him, Luis was so busy all day he didn’t have much time to think about our discordant intimacy. In spite of everything, he was thrown off-balance by a wife who barely spoke. I remember him glancing at his watch, at my shoes, at the rug, on those interminable evenings we spent together, when he smoked and I tried to read. Between us there was an almost infinite distance and I was convinced that as the years passed the separation would become deeper and deeper. Sometimes I’d see him get up, nervously, and go to the window. Finally he stopped suggesting any form of diversion to me … He liked me to be perfectly dressed and our house to be comfortable and luxurious … Once I had achieved all that, the poor man didn’t know what it was that was missing from our life.

  ‘If he sometimes took my hand, with an awkward smile, he seemed astonished at the passivity of my fingers, which were too small in his. He’d look up, and his entire face seemed possessed by a childish distress when he glanced at me. At those times I felt like laughing. It was like revenge for all the failure in my earlier life. For once I felt strong and powerful. For once I understood the pleasure that made Román’s soul vibrate when he mortified me. Luis would ask:

  ‘“Do you feel nostalgic for Spain?”

  ‘I would shrug and say no. The hours slipped past, quickly cutting the cloth of a life that was completely grey … No, Andrea, I didn’t want any child of my husband’s then. And yet it came. Each physical torment I felt seemed like another of life’s brutalities added on to the many others I’d had to endure. When they told me it was a girl, a strange grief combined with my unwillingness. I didn’t want to see her. I lay in the bed and looked away … I remember it was autumn and through the window I could see a sad, grey morning. Branches of a large tree, the colour of dry gold, were pushing, almost creaking, against the glass. The infant, next to my ear, began to cry. I felt remorse for having let her be born to me, for having condemned her to carrying my inheritance. I began to weep with a faint sorrow that because of me this wailing thing could become a woman some day. And moved by a compassionate impulse – almost as embarrassing as the one we feel when we put a coin in the hand of some unfortunate creature we see on the street – I held that piece of my flesh against my body and let it nurse, sucking and devouring and conquering me, for the first time, physically …

  ‘From that moment Ena was more powerful than me; she enslaved me, she subjected me. She made me marvel at her vitality, her strength, her beauty. As she grew I’d look at her with the same astonishment I’d feel if I saw all my unfulfilled longings growing in one body. I had dreamed of health, of energy, of the personal success that had been denied me, and I watched them develop in Ena from the time she was very little. You know, Andrea, that my daughter is like a radiant light of strength and life … I understood, humbly, the meaning of my existence when I saw all my pride, my strength, my best desires for perfection being realised so magically in her. I could look at Luis with new eyes and appreciate all his qualities because I’d first seen them reflected in my daughter. It was she, the little girl, who revealed to me the fine warp of life, the thousand sweetnesses of renunciation and love, which is not only passion and blind egoism between the body and soul of a man and the body and soul of a woman, but is invested with what we call understanding, friendship, tenderness. It was Ena who made me love her father, who made me want more children, and – since she required a mother adequate to her perfect, healthy human qualities – who made me consciously shed my sickly complaints, my narrow egotism … Open myself to others and discover unimagined horizons. Because before I created her, almost by force, with my own blood and bones, my own bitter substance, I was an unbalanced, mean-spirited woman. Dissatisfied and egotistical … A woman who’d rather die than have Ena suspect that in me …’

  We were silent.

  There was nothing more to say at this point, since it was easy for me to understand this language of blood, pain, and creation that begins with physical substance itself when one is a woman. It was easy to understand this, knowing that my own body was prepared – carrying the seeds – for this labour of life’s continuation. Though everything in me then was acid, and incomplete, like hope, I understood it.

  When Ena’s mother finished speaking, my thoughts harmonised entirely with hers.

  I became frightened and found that people had started to shout again around me (like the wave that, immobile and black for a moment, crashes against the cliff and explodes into clamour and foam). My eyes saw all the lights in the café and on the street at the same time when she spoke again.
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  ‘That’s why I want you to help me … Only you or Román can help me, and he refused. I’d like Ena to be embarrassed about Román without knowing the wretched part of my past that you know now. My daughter is not the sickly creature I was. She’d never let herself be carried away by the same fevers that consumed me … I don’t even know how to ask you to do something concrete. When they’re upstairs, in Román’s room, making music, I’d like somebody to dissipate the shadows, the false charm, simply by turning on the light. I’d like someone who isn’t me to talk to Ena about Román, and lie if necessary … Tell her that he’s hit you, emphasise his sadism, his cruelty, his turbulence … I know that what I’m requesting is too much … Now I’m the one asking you: do you know this side of your uncle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then, will you try to help me? Above all, don’t leave Ena, as you have until now … If she believes anyone, it’ll be you. She values you more than she’s let you know. I’m sure about that.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can be sure I’ll try to help you. But I don’t believe these things do any good.’

  (My soul rustled inside like crumpled paper. The way it had rustled when Ena pressed Román’s hand one day in front of me.)

  Her head hurt. I could almost touch the pain.

  ‘If only I could take her away from Barcelona! … You must think it’s ridiculous that I can’t impose my authority in a matter like the summer vacation. But my husband can’t possibly leave his business now and Ena defends herself, shields herself behind her desire not to leave him alone … What she accomplishes is that Luis gets angry at my insistence and, half-joking and half in earnest, accuses me of monopolising the daughter we both prefer. He tells me to go away with the boys and leave Ena with him. He’s enthusiastic because usually she’s not very generous with demonstrations of affection, but recently she’s been showing him extraordinary tenderness. I spend entire nights not sleeping …’

  (And I imagined her open-eyed next to her husband’s tranquil sleep. Bones aching because of stiff postures so as not to wake him … Alert to the creaking of the bed, the ache of sleepless eyelids, her own internal anguish.)

  ‘On the other hand, Andrea, I’ve tried telling ridiculous or offensive anecdotes about Román. My memory is full of those anecdotes … But I don’t venture down that path very often. If Ena looks at me, I feel that I’ll blush as if I were guilty. As if my daughter’s eyes are going to transfix me … My father has promised me that starting in September Luis will take charge of the Madrid office … But so many things can happen between then and now …’

  She stood to leave. She had not found relief in speaking to me. Before she put on her gloves she passed her hand over her forehead in a mechanical gesture. A hand so fine I wanted to turn her palm towards my eyes and marvel at its tenderness, as I sometimes like to do with the underside of leaves …

  In a moment I saw that she was moving away, that as I experienced the sensation of heavy stupor our talk had produced in me, the small, slim figure was disappearing into the crowd.

  Later, in my room, the night filled with disquiet. I thought about the words of Ena’s mother:

  ‘Only you or Román can help me, and he refused.’ At last, the señora had seen that man alone – and I don’t know why Román made me feel sad, he seemed to me like an unfortunate man – the one she pursued with her thoughts years ago. She’d seen the small room, the small theatre in which, over time, Román had finally enclosed himself. And her bitter eyes had guessed what could bewitch her daughter there.

  When it was almost dawn, a cortege of dark clouds like extremely long fingers began to float across the sky. At last, they put out the moon.

  XX

  MORNING CAME AND it seemed as if I could hear it arrive – my eyes still closed – like Aurora in a large chariot whose wheels were crushing my skull. The noise deafened me – the crack of bones, the shudder of wood and metal on the pavement. The clang of the tram. A confused murmur of leaves on the trees merged with lights. A distant shout:

  ‘Drapaireee! …’

  The doors of a balcony opened and closed nearby. The door of my room swung wide, pushed by a current of air, and I had to open my eyes. I found the room filled with a soft light. It was very late. Gloria was going to the balcony of the dining room to call to the ragman shouting in the street and Juan stopped her, grabbing her arm and slamming the glass door with a tremendous bang.

  ‘Leave me alone, kid!’

  ‘I told you not to sell anything else. Do you hear me? What’s in this house doesn’t belong only to me.’

  ‘And I’m telling you we have to eat …’

  ‘I earn enough for that!’

  ‘You know you don’t. You know very well why we aren’t starving to death here …’

  ‘You’re provoking me, you bitch!’

  ‘I’m not scared, kid!’

  ‘Ah! … No?’

  Juan seized her by the shoulders, exasperated.

  I saw Gloria fall and hit her head against the balcony door.

  The glass rattled and cracked. I heard her screaming on the floor.

  ‘I’ll kill you, damn you!’

  ‘I’m not scared of you, you coward!’

  Gloria’s piercing voice trembled.

  Juan picked up the pitcher of water and threw it at her when she tried to stand. This time there was broken glass, though he had poor aim. The pitcher shattered against the wall. One of the pieces ricocheted and cut the baby’s hand; he was sitting in his high chair and watching everything with round, serious eyes.

  ‘The baby! Imbecile! What a rotten mother, look what you’ve done to your son!’

  ‘Me?’

  Juan rushed at the child, who was terrified and at last began to cry. And he tried to quiet him with loving words, picking him up. Then he carried him away to treat the cut.

  Gloria was crying. She came into my room.

  ‘Did you see what an animal he is, Andrea? An animal!’

  I was sitting on the bed. She sat down too, rubbing the back of her neck, painful because of her fall.

  ‘You realise I can’t live here? I can’t … He’ll kill me, and I don’t want to die. Life’s very sweet, kid. You’re a witness … Weren’t you a witness, Andrea, when even he realised I was the only one doing anything to keep us from starving to death that night he found me playing cards? … Didn’t he say so in front of you, didn’t he cry and kiss me? Tell me, didn’t he kiss me?’

  She wiped her eyes and her small nose shortened in a smile.

  ‘In spite of everything, there was something comical in all of that, kid … A little comical. You know … I told Juan I was selling his paintings to houses that handled art objects. Actually I was selling them to ragmen, and with the five or six duros they gave me, I could play cards at night in my sister’s house … Friends of hers, men and women, get together there at night. My sister likes that very much because they buy liquor and she makes money on that. Sometimes they stay till dawn. They’re good players and they like to make bets. I almost always win … Almost always, kid … If I lose, my sister lends me money when I’m short and then I return it with a little interest when I win again … It’s the only honourable way to have a little money. I tell you that sometimes I’ve brought home forty or fifty duros at a time. It’s very exciting to gamble, kid … That night I’d won, I had thirty duros in front of me … And what a coincidence, imagine, it was just as well that Juan showed up, because I was playing against a very ignorant man and I cheated a little … Sometimes you have to do that. Well, anyway, he has a crossed eye. A strange man, you’d enjoy meeting him, Andrea. The worst thing is that you never know where he’s looking and what he’s seen or hasn’t seen … He’s a smuggler and has something to do with Román. You know Román does crooked business?’

  ‘And Juan?’

  ‘Ah, yes, yes! It was an exciting moment, kid, we were all quiet and Tonet said:

  ‘“Well, I don’t think anybody�
��s going to fool me …”

  ‘I was just a little scared inside … And that was when we began to hear a banging at the street door. A friend of my sister’s, Carmeta – a very good-looking girl, you bet … she said:

  ‘“Tonet, I think it’s for you.”

  ‘And Tonet, who was already listening, very suspicious, got up like a shot because he was on the run at the time. My sister’s husband said … well, my sister’s husband isn’t her husband, you know, but he’s just like one; well, he said:

  ‘“Get to the roof and then go to Martillet’s house. I’ll count to twenty before I open up. I think there’s only one or two people down there …”

  ‘Tonet started running up the stairs. It sounded like they were going to knock the door down. My sister, who’s more diplomatic, went to open the door. Then we heard Juan ranting and my brother-in-law frowned because he doesn’t like sentimental stories. He ran to see what was going on. Juan argued with him. Even though my brother-in-law’s a fat man, and two metres tall, you know that crazy people are very strong, kid, and Juan was like a crazy man. He couldn’t hold Juan back; but when he pushed past him and was pulling back the curtain, my brother-in-law punched him in the back and knocked him down, head first, into our room. It made me sad, poor thing (because I love Juan, Andrea. I was head-over-heels when I married him, you know?). I lifted his head, kneeling beside him, and began to tell him I was there to earn money for the baby. He shoved me away and got up, not very steady on his feet. Then my sister put her hands on her hips and delivered a speech. She told him that she herself had made propositions to me about men who would have paid a lot and that I refused because I loved him, though I was always going through hell because of him. Always silent, and suffering because of him. Juan, poor thing, was quiet, his arms hanging, looking at everything. He saw that the bets were on the table, that Carmeta and Teresa were there with two nice guys who are their boyfriends. He saw that things were serious there, it wasn’t a party … My sister told him I’d won thirty duros while he was planning to kill me. Then my brother-in-law began to belch in the corner where he was standing with his hands on his waist and it looked like Juan would go over to him and start fighting again in a frenzy … but my sister is a wonderful woman, kid. You’ve met her, and she said: