Rage (11 page)

He had smoked a pack of twenty a day for over twenty
years, and all of a sudden... The funny thing was that he
did not reallyfeel like smoking: itwas the image of himself
smoking, the performance of this habit, that never gave
out. He had thought of leaving the "vice" behind him a
thousand times, but he had never got beyond thinking
of it; he was that sure of the impossibility of giving up, it
was doomed from the start.

So what on earth could be the point of suffering all
those symptoms of abstinence? Now, obliged not to
smoke, it suddenly occurred to him that nothing had
followed from his giving up: he'd suffered no particular
anxieties or nervous attacks, no excessive perspiration.
Neither had he experienced any particular benefit:
absolutely no change had resulted in his energy levels,
his senses of taste or smell, all was precisely the same
as it was before. For over twenty years he had been the
victim of a fictitious addiction.

How?

He took his feet off the cane coffee table, and folded
his arms thoughtfully.

What had he done in his life?

His mother had gone off with another man. Almost at
once, his father brought another woman home. Maria
loathed her. So did his father, but he couldn't stand to
live alone. Maria left. He travelled as far as Capilla del
Senor and installed himself in a tiny room at the back
of a house belonging to his uncle and aunt. They were
very distant relatives, so he was obliged to pay rent. A
symbolic amount. Maria picked up any old full-time
job, and in the rare hours when he had nothing to do,
he wandered about alone, mostly because his uncle was a homosexual and kept hitting on him. Why had
he never walked out? That's where symbolism came into
it: the rent was so low that Maria preferred to put up
with the uncle. The truth of it was that years had passed
without him exchanging a word with anyone, apart
from insults and greetings. He couldn't recall having
sustained even half a conversation with anyone in his
entire life. He communicated by looks with his one and
only friend. He never watched television: the TV was in
the living room, with his uncle forever planted in front
of it. He read. He had got himself enrolled in the library
belonging to the Volunteer Fire Brigade, and took out
a novel a week, selecting those with the best covers, or
with the most promising titles. On the whole he proved
lucky. But despite the fact he was what people generally
called "a good-looking lad", nothing ever went right for
him where women were concerned. He liked them only
until they opened their mouths. In contrast, they liked
him until they realized that he was never going to open
his. He was too sullen and serious, too introverted. He
found whores easier to deal with. All of them, with the
exception of the kindly ones who didn't charge him to
sleep with them, and who then had too much to say for
themselves.

So there he was, without family, conversation, friends,
love or television. What on earth, then, had he done
with his life? He didn't know. But this was one question:
it was only when he had asked himself a great number,
all together or one after another, piling them up on top
of each other, that he found the answer. Rosa.

It was the best thing that had happened to him, and
it was instantaneous: a revolution at first sight. Rosa
had attracted him like a magnet. He remembered that
afternoon at the exit to the Disco supermarket, how as he crossed the street to their meeting, he felt himself
literally drawn towards her. He crossed the street like
a zombie, his mind a blank, without the least idea of
what he was going to say. Fortunately it had all gone
well, arguably too well: they talked briefly about Shakira
and the Disco supermarket, and from that moment on,
Maria was a new man, cheerful, chatty and confident.
He no longer had to eat dirt in the way he used to.

Sometimes he'd wake in the middle of the night, not
knowing where he was... He didn't know where the
window was, nor the door... He'd go back to sleep only
when he "understood" he was asleep. When morning
rose, he'd feel dislocated all over again. The room and
each one of his petty daily indicators, the handle on his
little coffee pot, the direction of his shadow, the way
his chair was facing, every single thing pointed towards
her...

It was true: Rosa was indeed all he missed from the
outside world, she alone was really essential to him. So
who was the guy ringing her?

Maria had called her on 20th November. On that
occasion he'd promised to call her back the following
day, which he hadn't done. And not because he hadn't
wanted to - if it were down to him, he'd have been
calling her at any or every moment of the morning,
noon or night - but because he had been left with
the impression that Rosa had heard him "from too
close at hand" and, just in case, decided not to phone
again until the impression (his impression of Rosa's
impression) had faded. In spite of the fact that various
days of silence had followed his reappearance, it had
succeeded in cooling the flirtation between Rosa and
"the guy". The result of his call was obvious: Rosa
preferred him to the other one. But it was also obvious that if he disappeared again, Rosa would be bound to
revive the relationship with the other guy. And so it
happened.

Day after day, the guy's phone calls continued with
increasing frequency. By the end, he was ringing her
at all hours. Sometimes Rosa would be on her own, but
most of the time Senor and Senora Blinder were there
too, and Maria found himself obliged to undertake
large detours around the house in order to locate
himself somewhere within earshot. From what Rosa was
saying, from the cadences and oscillations in her voice,
her flirtatiousness had manifestly revived.

Maria deduced that the guy was without pride and
that, in consequence, could be a rival to be wary of, for
even after Rosa had given him the cold shoulder, he
had persisted to the point where the relationship could
be rekindled, and so it did. On 3rd December, Maria
called her again.

"Rosa...

"Maria! Where are you? What happened?"

"Let's not go over that again, please. Are you well?"

"Yes. How about you?"

"I'm very well. A little bird told me that you're out
seeing someone..."

"What little bird?"

"Little bird?"

"I don't know. You mentioned a little bird..."

"A friend, an acquaintance, if you like. I don't know
whether you remember, one day when we left the hotel
in the Bajo, we bumped into him and I introduced
you..."

"I don't remember..."

"It doesn't matter. He told me he spotted you out the
other day with someone..."

"It's a lie."

"Why would he lie to me?"

"How would I know? I don't know him... But tell him
to stop telling tales, and that certainly this one isn't
true."

"Are you sure?"

"Maria, my love, what's happened and where are you,
why don't you come? I beg you: don't leave me hanging on
like this. Tell me something, even if... Hello, Maria?"

"I'm here."

"Don't you love me any more?"

"I adore you."

"Me too."

"Me too."

"So, now?"

"Who's the guy?"

"What guy?"

"Does he work in the Disco?"

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"They told me you go out every week with one of the
gardeners from the villa here. Is that him?"

"Who tells you these things, your friend? Some great
friend if that's what he's filling your head with."

"Do they have a gardener, yes or no?"

"Yes, but the guy they have..."

"Is it him?"

"He who?"

"Don't you turn my words back on me, Rosa, you know
full well what I'm saying to you..."

"My God..."

Maria was dying to be explicit. The real question was
"Who keeps phoning you?" - but there was no way he
could ask such a question.

"They seized you," Rosa suddenly said.

"Eh?"

"They grabbed you, you're a prisoner," said Rosa,
crying. "That's why you don't want to say anything to
me, because they've taken you prisoner. My darling, you
have no idea what I..."

"I'm not in jail, Rosa."

"It doesn't matter..."

"I'm really not, I'm here."

"Here, where?"

"Free... here... here at large..."

"I don't believe you. I know these things, Maria.
Doesn't matter. Tell me where you are and I'll come and
see you. It doesn't matter if you're a prisoner, I swear by
my children. I don't have any children, but all the same,
I swear by all I hold most dear. To me, you..."

"Rosa..." said Maria.

And hung up.

He couldn't bear it. He was convinced that she had
again managed to put her inclination to surrender to
her new caller on ice, whoever he might be. What he
could least bear was to hear her without seeing her, and
to see her without being seen. He set down the phone
and approached Rosa's room.

Rosa had just come in. Maria could hear her sobbing
and hugged himself as if he were hugging her. He
bore her in his heart, as if he had truly embraced and
enfolded her.

11

One night he helped himself to a book by Dr Wayne W.
Dyer entitled YourErroneous Zones from the library. It was
a revelation. He felt the book spoke to him (something which had never occurred with the novels, which merely
kept him occupied).

Given that at least for the time being he no longer
needed to concern himself with phone calls from his
rival, since his own most recent call to Rosa had caused
a further cooling between her and him, he devoted
himself to reading. He read with a dedication and a
concentration hitherto unknown to him.

It was all true. There was no phrase or idea, or
statistic, or commentary, or fact, which did not resonate
with a note of truth in his conscience. Every time he
opened the book (something he would do only very
infrequently in the course of a day, since he almost
never closed it) he had a light-bulb moment. A light
went on in his brain and he was dazzled. And at the
same time the book left him feeling utterly stupid: he
could scarcely believe he had never previously noticed
that things were like that, or that they functioned in
this particular manner.

The application with which he had pursued his
domination of the house (so that he now knew it right
down to its trivial details, including all about the bidet
in one of the second-floor bathrooms, a bidet somehow
designed in such a way that it was impossible to sit on
the rim and dry your feet with a towel, or to engage in
any other activity which failed to conform to its principal
function, for fear of falling in, as though the bidet were
inclined to swallow you up) was now directed towards
his own internal world, where the revelations provided
in the sugared pills proffered by the book affected him
in a particular fashion. His desire to derive benefit from
everything he read meant that his reading became
tortuous. He would read phrases like: "there are men
who manipulate forgetfulness with malice, much as if they were dealing punches", asking himself what to
"manipulate forgetfulness with malice" actually meant,
what was Doctor Dyer alluding to with "manipulate
forgetfulness" and even questioning the meaning of the
word "manipulate".

Using a few blank sheets of paper he had previously
taken from the desk, he jotted down the most important
sentences. He went back over it, rereading passages; he
paused, but he also progressed. Ten days later, when
he had finished the book, he felt different, enriched,
vindicated.

That night he undertook his most daring action since
moving into the villa: he went out of the kitchen...
out into the open air... The excursion hardly lasted
more than a moment, just enough to cast a glance over
his surroundings. But on seeing the street (and the
starless sky above) for the first time in a long while with
his feet on the ground, an idea arose which doubled
his daring: to exit through the barred gate, make
a hurried copy of the key; return and ring the bell,
embrace Rosa, make love with her, bid her farewell;
all before returning indoors... He knew the house by
touch, including its sounds, its movements... Nothing
there at all to prevent his projected undertaking.

Back in his room again, he recounted his idea to
the rat. All of a sudden, he heard the sound of a
struggle on the ground floor; he was so enraptured
with his daydream that it took a while to realize he was
overhearing a struggle which had been initiated several
minutes earlier. He ran full tilt downstairs.

Alvaro was harassing Rosa. He was pursuing her from
the kitchen into the corridor, and from the corridor
into the bedroom. Indignation cloaked Maria with
invisibility: for an instant he believed himself capable of emerging from his hiding place and coming to Rosa's
defence, without being seen by either of the pair of
them.

12

The scene of Alvaro's harassing Rosa had replaced the
miracle of Your Erroneous Zones. For days now he had
been staring at the dust jacket of the book lying on
his bed, with the sensation of never having read it. He
thought of nothing and no one but Alvaro.

One morning he was cutting his hair in the bath when
he heard strange noises coming from the ground floor.
He took fright, knowing that both the Blinders and
Rosa had only just left the house. It was one of those
extremely rare occasions when nobody else was in the
villa. The Blinders had gone out in a hurry, leaving an
odour of perfume hanging in the air behind them; Rosa
had accompanied them as far as the garage and, once
the car had departed, had locked the side gate: no doubt
she'd gone off on some errand or other... Maria heard a
grunt, a muffled crash, and his freshly cut hair bristled.
Who could be in the house? Hurriedly, he gathered up
some curls that had fallen on the floor, wrapped them in
a piece of newspaper, and secreted them in his pocket.