Rage (10 page)

Maria had killed his foreman without any feeling of
rage. If you wanted to put it better, you could say he
had done it in the memory of his rage, some hours after
having experienced it, as if the rage itself had vanished,
only to leave him in the hands of the new form of
reason it had engendered. It was wholly premeditated.
Not in detail, nor in method - those remained free
to be improvised on the spur of the moment - but in
its ultimate objective of killing the foreman. When
the time came, he paced the outskirts of the work site, leaving and returning to it more than once: he took his
time. At half-past six, or possibly a few minutes later,
once he was certain he would find the man alone - the
foreman always being the last to depart - he went in.
He was feeling calm. He hadn't even bothered with an
alibi. He had no thought of possible consequences. The
foreman had: he looked into Maria's eyes and knew that
this was the last man he would ever see.

The terror which followed this realization froze him to
the spot. He didn't even have time to swallow the saliva
risingin his throat. Maria thought thatAlvaro, even drunk
and asleep - maybe just because of this -would probably
offer more resistance than the foreman. In addition to
which, this time he had no stone in his hand, as he'd had
wielded on the previous occasion. He would be obliged
to strangle him, or... To his right he caught sight of a
poker. He estimated that two or three blows would be
enough to smash his skull. He could visualize the entire
scene: the first blow... the second, to the forehead...
the blood... And suddenly he felt overwhelmed with
tiredness, as if he'd already executed the deed.

He left the room and slowly crossed the dark landing,
heading in the direction of the staircase. Halfway over
he heard a noise. He turned to look. One window pane,
which had swung itself shut, was swinging slowly open
again... It was the wind, nothing but the wind. Even so,
he hastened his pace.

9

Spring only really arrived in mid-November. Outside
- he could observe it in the garden or on the street - it
had begun earlier, before you could get a sense of it inside the house. The attic and the third floor stayed
damp and dark, but all the same the temperature had
risen in there by at least a degree a day in recent weeks,
until finally it seemed on a par with that outside.

Maria had come to feel more comfortable and at ease:
he slept somewhat easier, food seemed to taste better,
he allowed himself longer in the shower... Even his
daily constitutionals around the house lasted longer.
This was helped by the fact that his confidence had
also improved: neither Alvaro nor the police had reappeared, Senor and Senora Blinder were spending
more and more daylight hours away from the house,
and Maria's domination of its second and third floors
was nearly complete, in every sense. For some time
now, he'd been able to tell the footsteps of the house's
inhabitants apart; now he'd learned to distinguish the
direction they were heading in, their degree of haste,
even what each person had in mind as they went on
their way. He knew their routines, their caprices, he had
the measure of their breathing and differentiated the
manner in which they opened and closed doors - and
he could tell who had just deposited their glass on the
table... all learned as a blind man would, since he had
never - or almost never - seen any of them.

Two or three times he had gone into the Blinders'
bedroom, so at least he'd obtained a physical portrait
and an intellectual profile of the two of them. He had
investigated their wardrobes, and always noted the new
copy of Reader's Digest on Senor Blinder's bedside table,
and the daily paper on the Senora's, invariably with a
glass of whisky standing on it. Rita Blinder drank in bed,
and no doubt in all kinds of other quiet places, like her
son. And finally he discovered that a man had started
phoning Rosa.

This discovery coincided with another, which he
made through his passion for intercepting all forms
of communication with Rosa. The very thought of
Rosa kissing another man wounded him deeply.
In a fit of jealousy, one afternoon when Rosa had
just received one of these calls, Maria raced up the
staircase and picked up the telephone on the third
floor. But he could only hear the dial tone through
it. He headed downstairs again at full speed. Rosa
was still talking. That meant the house had to have
two phone lines.

At that moment, he wasn't particularly bothered with
following Rosa's conversation, with its suggestive giggles in the background. His only thought was that he
must have made an extraordinary discovery. "I've got
a phone!" he told himself. It was so absurd it was emotionally moving. He could speak to Rosa, he could ring
and talk to her without her suspecting he was no more
than a few yards away.

He went back up to the third floor, picked up the
telephone directory and searched for a phone number
under the name Blinder. There were seven.

He began with the first. He dialled the number, and
while the phone rang at the other end, he realized he
hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to say. He
cut the line. He had let himself be carried away on an
impulse, but - wasn't it perhaps something he should
think about? He made an effort and thought.

He felt a dizziness throughout his body. A dizziness
that didn't - as usually happened - begin in his head.
Then he picked up the handset again and resumed
dialling the first number on the list.

Engaged.

He hung up and redialled.

Still engaged. He couldn't believe it. He was no more
than two steps away from his lover and all he got was:
engaged!

The line stayed engaged for at least another half-hour
or more. He was inclined to keep trying (after all, he
had all the time in the world: there had never been a
man more absorbed in what he was doing and with so
much time to be doing it), but he heard the sound of the
street door opening, and the voices of Senor and Senora
Blinder as they came inside, arguing. So he put away the
directory and the handset (it was a free-standing one,
a half-moon of transparent plastic, with all the internal
chips and cables exposed, some apparatus which seemed
to have been dropped there from another planet) and
took it to his room with him.

He closed the door and resumed dialling once more.

This time the phone rang.

(Brilliant.)

The phone rang seven times before it was picked up,
and a woman's voice spoke:

"Hello?..."

Maria cut it short and hung up.

It hadn't sounded like Rosa's voice. "OK," he said to himself, "I don't even know if I'm really calling home or not."
After all, it might not have been "his" Blinders' home number. Had he been lucky enough to get it right first time, the
only way to be sure was to ask for Rosa by name, and to be
allowed to speak to her. So he redialled yet again.

While the phone was ringing, he asked himself what on
earth he'd say if Senora Blinder happened to answer...

This time the woman picked it up at the second ring,
before he'd had a chance to gather his thoughts.

"Good afternoon," he said, faltering. "Please may I
speak to Rosa?"

"Rosa who?"

He put the receiver down.

It wasn't her.

He felt relieved that it was the wrong number, so irrationally and profoundly relieved that he frantically
dialled the next number, as though he'd suddenly realized that his relationship with this telephone would be
sufficient once and for all to modify his entire genetic
make-up.

Another woman responded this time.

"Good afternoon. Please may I speak to Rosa?"

"Who is it?"

"A friend... one of Rosa's friends. Is she in?"

"There's nobody called Rosa here..."

He hung up again.

Then he dialled the next number.

"Good afternoon. Is Rosa there?"

"You've got the wrong number." Yet another woman.

It seemed to him as if that night there had to be some
reason why all the Blinders in town were next to their
telephones. So he went on to the next number listed.

As the phone rang, he suddenly felt as if he were immersed in a world of irrationality and chance. He had
crossed his legs, as he always used to before settling himself in at home in order to listen to the lottery results on
the radio. Even now, he could feel the palpitations...

"Hello?"

Yet another woman on the line.

"Hello?" she repeated.

Maria paused. It was her! It was Rosa!

Impatiently, Rosa hung up.

Maria dialled the number again.

He dialled with his right index finger, carefully holding
the telephone steady. But his left hand (resting on the telephone directory, with its index finger underlining
the correct number) was trembling.

"Hello?" enquired Rosa.

"Rosa?" enquired Maria.

"Yes, that's me. Who is it?"

Rosa sounded indifferent, formal, as if, having spoken
to "the man who called her", any other voice that didn't
belong to "him" would necessarily be for the Blinders,
and that he - and the rest of the world - were something
in which she didn't have the remotest interest.

Maria could sense it. He had been with Rosa on
other occasions when someone rang, requesting to
speak to one of the Blinders. He knew the timbre,
the form, the waves of indifference her voice could
transmit, all of which contrasted with the urgency
which formerly only he could elicit from her. It was
no longer jealousy he was experiencing but pain. The
pain of exclusion.

"It's Maria," he said in a tone of voice which belonged
to a man cast out of the world, with nothing but a coin
in one hand, and a telephone in the other.

"Who?" she asked.

"It's Maria, Rosa. It's me. How are you? Hello? Rosa,
are you there?"

"Maria?"

"Yes, me. What's up?"

"Maria?"

"Yes..."

"Maria, is it you?"

"Yes, yes..."

"Maria, good God, swear that it's really you..."

Maria bunched his fingertips into the form of a cross
and kissed them. He was feeling emotional.

"Swear it to me," she repeated.

"I swear it."

A pause.

"Maria..."

"I surprised you..."

"Where have you been? Whatever happened to you?"

"Oh, well, it's just that..." he gesticulated as if to say
"too long to explain".

"I can't believe it," exclaimed Rosa, and Maria could
hear the sound of her crying.

"I'm sorry not to have called you before but..."

A sob.

"Rosa, look, things turned out in such a way that..."

Another sob.

Silence.

Then Rosa said:

"What happened?"

"It's a long story..."

"Tell me."

"I always meant to tell you... you understand me. I
love you. I've never forgotten."

"Are you at home?"

"Rosa..."

"Where are you? Why are you talking in such a low
voice?"

"I can't tell you that..."

"Are you well? What happened? They say you killed
the foreman at your old workplace..."

"No."

"Then why do they say so? What happened to you, my
darling?"

"How beautiful that you use those words to me, `my
darling'."

"They just slipped out..."

"I wish they could slip out like that all the time."

"They do slip out, but since I've heard nothing further
from you..."

"You're going out with someone else?"

"No! Wherever did you get that idea from?"

'Just asking..."

"That's rubbish. I'm on my own, as before. And you?
When are you going to come round? Why did you disappear like that?"

"That's what I'm about to tell you..."

"So it's all a lie, everything they say about you?"

"About killing that guy?"

"Yes..."

"Of course it is."

"Where are you, Maria?"

"I'm going to have to hang up, Rosa, I'm using someone else's phone..."

"Is that why you're talking so quietly?"

"Yes. And you? Are you sure there's no one else in
your life?"

"You already asked me about that. The answer's still
no."

"Do you think of me?"

"All the time."

"Me too."

"Wait - don't hang up!"

"How did you know I was about to hang up?11

"I know you, Maria. Tell me something... I don't know
anything about you..."

"I've got to go."

"No, wait!"

"I'll call you back again tomorrow."

"Don't hang up!"

"Forgive me, but..."

"Wait!"

"I love you."

"Maria!"

"'Bye, my darling, I'll call you tomorrow. It's been
wonderful talking to you," said Maria, and hung up.

He could feel his heart pounding throughout his
body.

He waited a couple more minutes in order to regain
control of himself then went downstairs to replace the
telephone. Afterwards, back in his room again, he lay
flat on his back on his bed and mentally reviewed everything they had said to each other. All of a sudden he
heard a sound away to his right. He turned his head
in the direction of the wardrobe and paused a few
moments.

"I rang her," he told the rat. And he smiled.

10

The second floor was where he spent most of his time,
given its wealth of available facilities. He got into the
habit of sitting on the sofa completely naked, legs
stretched out in front of him and ankles resting on the
coffee table, reflecting on his options of getting out of
the house without going to prison. He always thought
in terms of "options", in the plural, even though he
never got as far as encountering so much as a single
one. There was nowhere for him to go. In any case, he
was considerably better off here than in his own home,
even assuming he'd had a home to call his own. And
he no longer thought in terms like "if I were free" with
bitterness, but with rejoicing: the street signified his
prison sentence. Or that was how he put it to himself.
On the other hand, what he missed from the outside world, though unable to approach it, was available to
him there indoors. All except for one thing: cigarettes.