Nada Page 6

  I don’t know if it was a beautiful or mean-spirited sentiment – and at the time it wouldn’t have occurred to me to analyse it – that impelled me to open my suitcase and make an inventory of my treasures. I piled up my books, looking at them one by one. I had brought all of them from my father’s library, which my cousin Isabel kept in the attic of her house, and they looked yellow and mildewed. My underwear and a little tin box completed the picture of everything I possessed in the world. In the box I found old photographs, my parents’ wedding rings, and a silver medal with my date of birth. Beneath everything, wrapped in tissue paper, was a handkerchief of magnificent old lace that my grandmother had sent me on the day of my first communion. I hadn’t remembered that it was so pretty and the joy of being able to give it to Ena compensated for a good many sorrows. It compensated for how difficult it was becoming for me to be clean when I went to the university, and above all to look clean beside the comfortable appearance of my friends. The sorrow of mending my gloves, of washing my blouses in murky, freezing water in the wash basin in the gallery with the same piece of soap that Antonia used to scrub the pots and that in the morning scraped against my body under the cold shower. Being able to give Ena a gift so delicately beautiful compensated for all the wretchedness of my life. I remember taking it to the university on the last day of classes before the Christmas holiday, and hiding this fact very carefully from my relatives; not because I thought it was wrong to make a gift of what was mine, but because that gift invaded the precincts of intimate things from which I had excluded all of them. By then I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought of talking about Ena to Román, not even to tell him that someone admired his art.

  Ena was moved and so happy when she found the pretty trifle in the package I gave her that her happiness brought me closer to her than all her previous displays of affection. She made me feel that I was everything I wasn’t: rich and contented. And I could never forget that.

  I recall that this incident put me in a good mood, and I began my holidays with more patience and sweetness towards everyone than I normally had. I was pleasant even to Angustias. On Christmas Eve I dressed, ready to go to Midnight Mass with her, although she hadn’t asked me. To my great surprise she became very nervous.

  ‘I prefer to go alone tonight, dear …’

  She thought I was disappointed and caressed my face.

  ‘You can go tomorrow and take communion with your granny …’

  I wasn’t disappointed, I was surprised, because Angustias made me go with her to all religious ceremonies and liked to monitor and criticise my devotion.

  I had slept a good many hours when a splendid Christmas morning dawned. I did, in fact, accompany my grandmother to Mass. In the strong sunlight the old woman, in her black coat, looked like a little wrinkled raisin. She was so happy as she walked beside me that I was tormented by dark remorse at not loving her more.

  When we were on our way home, she told me she had offered up her communion to peace in the family.

  ‘Let these brothers reconcile, my child, it’s my only desire, and also for Angustias to understand how good Gloria is and how unlucky she’s been.’

  As we climbed the stairs we heard shouts coming from our apartment. Granny held my arm even tighter and sighed.

  When we went in we found Gloria, Angustias, and Juan having a shouting argument in the dining room. Gloria was crying hysterically.

  Juan was trying to hit Angustias on the head with a chair, and she had picked up another one to use as a shield and was making leaps to defend herself.

  Since the excited parrot was shrieking and Antonia was singing in the kitchen, the scene was not lacking in a certain humour.

  Granny immediately became involved in the quarrel, waving her arms and trying to hold Angustias, who became desperate.

  Gloria ran to me.

  ‘Andrea! You can say it isn’t true!’

  Juan put down the chair to look at me.

  ‘What can Andrea say?’ Angustias shouted. ‘I know very well you stole it …’

  ‘Angustias! If you keep insulting people, I’ll split your head open, damn you!’

  ‘All right, but what is it that I have to say?’

  ‘Angustias says I took a lace handkerchief of yours …’

  I felt myself turning stupidly red, as if I had been accused of something. A wave of heat. A rush of boiling blood to my cheeks, my ears, the veins of my neck …

  ‘I don’t speak without proof!’ Angustias said, her index finger pointing at Gloria. ‘Somebody saw you take that handkerchief out of the house to sell it. It was the only valuable thing my niece had in her suitcase, and you can’t deny you’ve gone through that suitcase before to take something out of it. Twice I’ve found you wearing Andrea’s underwear.’

  This was, in fact, true. A disagreeable habit of Gloria’s, who was dirty and slovenly in everything and without too many scruples regarding other people’s possessions.

  ‘But it isn’t true that she took the handkerchief,’ I said, oppressed by a childish anguish.

  ‘See? You filthy witch! You’d be better off having some shame in your own affairs and not getting involved in other people’s business.’

  This was Juan, naturally.

  ‘It isn’t true? It isn’t true that somebody stole your first communion handkerchief? … Where is it, then? Because this very morning I was looking in your suitcase and there’s nothing there.’

  ‘I gave it to somebody,’ I said, controlling the pounding of my heart. ‘I gave it to somebody as a present.’

  Aunt Angustias came at me so quickly I closed my eyes in an instinctive gesture, as if she were trying to hit me. She stood so close that her breath bothered me.

  ‘Tell me who you gave it to, right now! Your boyfriend? Do you have a boyfriend?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Then it isn’t true. You’re telling a lie to defend Gloria. You don’t care about making me look ridiculous as long as that whore comes out all right …’

  Usually Aunt Angustias was measured in her speech. This time she must have been infected by the general atmosphere. The rest happened very quickly: a slap from Juan, so brutal it made Angustias stagger and fall to the floor.

  I bent down quickly and tried to help her up. Brusquely she pushed me away, crying. In reality the scene had lost all its amusement for me.

  ‘And listen, you witch!’ Juan shouted. ‘I didn’t say it before because I’m a hundred times better than you and the whole damn tribe in this house, but I don’t care at all if everybody finds out that your boss’s wife has good reason to insult you on the phone, which she does sometimes, and that last night you didn’t go to Midnight Mass or anywhere near it …’

  I believe it will be hard for me to forget how Angustias looked at that moment. With dishevelled grey hair, eyes so wide open they frightened me, and the two fingers she used to wipe away a thread of blood at the corner of her mouth … she looked drunk.

  ‘Swine! Swine! … Madman!’ she shouted.

  Then she covered her face with her hands and ran to lock herself in her room. We heard the bed groan under her body, and then her weeping.

  The dining room remained enveloped in an astonishing calm. I looked at Gloria and saw that she was smiling at me. I didn’t know what to do. I tried a timid knock at Angustias’ door and noted with relief that she didn’t answer.

  Juan went to the studio and from there he called Gloria. I heard them beginning a new argument that sounded muffled, like a storm moving away.

  I went towards the balcony and leaned my forehead against the windows. On that Christmas Day the street looked like an immense golden pastry shop full of delicious things.

  I heard Granny coming up behind me and then her narrow hand, always bluish with cold, began a feeble caress of my hand.

  ‘Naughty girl,’ she said, ‘you naughty girl … you gave away my handkerchief.’

  I looked at her and saw that she was sad, with a childish distress in h
er eyes.

  ‘Didn’t you like my handkerchief? It belonged to my mother, but I wanted it to be for you …’

  I didn’t know what to say and turned over her hand to kiss her palm, wrinkled and soft. Distress squeezed my throat too, like a harsh rope. I thought that any joy in my life had to be paid for with something unpleasant. Perhaps this was a fatal law.

  Antonia came in to lay the table. In the centre, as if it were flowers, she placed a large plate of nougat. Aunt Angustias refused to come out of her room to eat.

  It was my grandmother, Gloria, Juan, Román, and I at that strange Christmas meal, sitting around a large table with its frayed checked tablecloth.

  Juan rubbed his hands together happily.

  ‘Wonderful! Wonderful!’ he said, and uncorked a bottle.

  Since it was Christmas Day, Juan felt very animated. Gloria began to eat pieces of nougat, using them like bread, beginning with the soup. Granny laughed with joy, her head unsteady after she drank some wine.

  ‘There’s no chicken or turkey, but a good rabbit’s better than anything,’ said Juan.

  Only Román, as usual, seemed distant from the meal. He took pieces of nougat, too, to give to the dog.

  We resembled any calm, happy family, enfolded in simple poverty, not wishing for anything else.

  A clock that was always slow sounded its untimely bells and the satisfied parrot fluffed up his feathers in the sun.

  Suddenly it all seemed idiotic, comical, and laughable again. And unable to help myself I began to laugh when no one was speaking, when it was out of place, and I choked. They hit me on the back, and I, red in the face and coughing until tears came to my eyes, laughed; then I began to cry, seriously, in distress, sad, empty.

  In the afternoon Aunt Angustias had me go to her room. She was in bed, placing cloths soaked in water and vinegar on her forehead. By now she was calm, and looked ill.

  ‘Come here, dear, come here,’ she said, ‘I have to explain something to you … I want you to know that your aunt is incapable of doing anything wicked or inappropriate.’

  ‘I know that. I’ve never doubted it.’

  ‘Thank you, child, you didn’t believe Juan’s slanders?’

  ‘Ah … that you weren’t at Midnight Mass last night?’ I controlled my desire to smile. ‘No. Why wouldn’t you be? Besides, I don’t think it’s important.’

  She moved uneasily.

  ‘It’s very difficult for me to explain it to you, but …’

  Her voice was heavy with water, like clouds swollen with spring. I thought another scene would be unbearable, and I touched her arm with my fingertips.

  ‘I don’t want you to explain anything. I don’t believe you have to account to me for your actions, Aunt. And if it’s helpful to you, I’ll tell you that I think anything immoral they might have said about you is impossible.’

  She looked at me, her brown eyes fluttering beneath the visor of damp cloth she wore on her head.

  ‘I’m leaving this house very soon, dear,’ she said in a hesitant voice. ‘Much sooner than anybody imagines. Then my truth will shine.’

  I tried to imagine what life would be like without Aunt Angustias, the horizons that would open to me … She wouldn’t let me.

  ‘Now, Andrea, listen to me.’ Her tone had changed. ‘If you’ve given away that handkerchief you have to ask for it back.’

  ‘Why? It was mine.’

  ‘Because I’m ordering you to.’

  I smiled a little, thinking about the contradictions in that woman.

  ‘I can’t do that. I won’t do anything so stupid.’

  Something hoarse rose in Angustias’ throat, like pleasure in a cat. She sat up in bed, removing the damp handkerchief from her forehead.

  ‘Would you swear you’ve given it away as a gift?’

  ‘Of course I would! For God’s sake!’

  I was bored to despair with the matter.

  ‘I gave it to a girl, a classmate at the university.’

  ‘Think about it if you’re swearing falsely.’

  ‘Aunt, don’t you realise that all of this is becoming ridiculous? I’m telling the truth. Where did you get the idea that Gloria took it?’

  ‘Your Uncle Román assured me she had, dear.’ She lay back again, weakly, on the pillow. ‘And may God forgive him if he told a lie. He said he’d seen Gloria selling your handkerchief in an antique store; that’s why I went to look through your suitcase this morning.’

  I was perplexed, as if I had put my hands into something dirty, not knowing what to do or say.

  I ended Christmas Day in my room, surrounded by that fantasy of furniture in the twilight. I was sitting on the divan, wrapped in the blanket, my head resting on my bent knees.

  Outside, in the shops, streams of light would intertwine and people would be loaded down with packages. The cribs with all their shepherds and sheep would be lit. Sweets, bouquets of flowers, decorated baskets, good wishes, presents would be going back and forth across the streets.

  Gloria and Juan had gone out with the baby. I thought their figures would be thinner, vaguer, lost among other people. Antonia had gone out too, and I listened to the footsteps of Granny, as nervous and expectant as a mouse as she sniffed around the forbidden world of the kitchen, the domain of the terrible woman. She dragged over a chair to reach the cupboard door. When she found the sugar tin, I heard the nougat crunch between her false teeth.

  The rest of us were in bed. Aunt Angustias and I, and upstairs, separated by the muffled layers of noise (sounds of the gramophone, dances, noisy conversations) on each floor, I could imagine Román lying down too, smoking, smoking …

  And the three of us thought about ourselves without going beyond the narrow limits of that life. Not even him, not even Román with his false stand-offish appearance. He, Román, more mean-spirited, more caught up than anybody in the minuscule roots of the everyday. His life sucked away, his faculties, his art, by the passion of that agitation in the house. He, Román, capable of prying into my suitcase and inventing lies and mischief against a person he pretended to despise to the point of affecting absolute ignorance of her existence.

  This was how that Christmas Day ended for me, freezing in my room and thinking about these things.

  VII

  TWO DAYS AFTER the stormy scene I’ve recounted here, Angustias dusted off her suitcases and left without telling us where she was going or when she planned to come back.

  But her trip didn’t affect the character of silent escapade that Román gave to his travels. Angustias upset the house for two days with her orders and shouts. She was nervous, she contradicted herself. Sometimes she cried.

  When the suitcases were closed and the taxi was waiting, she embraced my grandmother.

  ‘Bless me, Mamá!’

  ‘Yes, my child, yes, my child …’

  ‘Remember what I told you.’

  ‘Yes, my child …’

  Juan watched the scene with his hands in his pockets, impatient.

  ‘You’re crazier than a loon, Angustias!’

  She didn’t answer him. I saw her in her long dark coat, her eternal hat, leaning on her mother’s shoulder, bending down until she touched that white head with her own, and I had the sensation that in front of me was one of the last autumn leaves, dead on the tree before the wind tears them away.

  When she finally left, her echoes kept vibrating for some time. That same afternoon the doorbell rang and I opened to a stranger who had come to see her.

  ‘Has she left already?’ he said, agitated, as if he had been running.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then may I see your grandmother?’

  I showed him into the dining room and he cast an uneasy glance at all that ruinous sorrow. He was tall and stout and had very grey, heavy eyebrows.

  Granny appeared with the baby glued to her skirts, with her spectral, shabby dignity, smiling sweetly but not recognising him.

  ‘I don’t know where …’

 
; ‘I lived in this house for many months, Señora. I’m Jerónimo Sanz.’

  I looked at Angustias’ boss with impertinent curiosity. He looked like a man with a bad temper that he controlled with difficulty. He was very well dressed. His dark eyes, almost without whites, recalled those of the pigs that Isabel raised in the village.

  ‘Jesus! Dear Jesus!’ said Granny, trembling. ‘Of course … Sit down. Do you know Andrea?’

  ‘Yes, Señora. I saw her the last time she was here. She’s changed very little … she looks like her mother around the eyes and in how tall and slim she is. In fact, Andrea bears a great resemblance to your family.’

  ‘She’s just like my son Román; if she had black eyes she’d look like my son Román,’ said my grandmother unexpectedly.

  Don Jerónimo breathed heavily in his armchair. He had as little interest in the conversation about me as I did. He turned to my grandmother and saw that she had forgotten about him and was busy playing with the baby.

  ‘Señora. I’d like Angustias’ address … This is a favour I’m asking of you. You know … there are some matters at the office that only she can take care of, and … she didn’t remember that … and …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said my grandmother. ‘She didn’t remember … Angustias forgot to say where she was going. Isn’t that so, Andrea?’

  She smiled at Don Jerónimo, her small eyes light and sweet.

  ‘She forgot to give her address to anybody,’ she concluded. ‘Maybe she’ll write … My daughter is a little unusual. Imagine, she insists on saying that her sister-in-law, my daughter-in-law Gloria, isn’t perfect …’

  Don Jerónimo, red-faced above his stiff white collar, looked for the right moment to take his leave. From the door he gave me a look of singular hatred. I had the impulse to run after him, to grab him by the lapels and scream at him in a fury: