Rage (16 page)

That meant two long and very tedious days. He was
prevented from reading by his anxiety... Why had Rosa
said that she believed they'd killed Alvaro? He did his
gymnastic exercises... Who was the big guy who called
her up on the phone? He'd discovered that the Walkman
couldn't be made to work... He was overwhelmed with an impulse to smash it on the floor, but he put it down
on the bed and got up.

He pulled one slat of the venetian blinds down a couple
of inches, applied an eye to the gap and took a look
outside. That calmed him down. Every time he looked
out, he was surprised to find that within this scrap of
reality, as he called the outside world, he could see all of
reality. A panorama of no more than thirty yards across,
from the building with its yellow acrylic balconies to the
corner on the opposite side of the street, was enough
to give him a sense of the general mood, at least that of
the upper classes; do the same with the unemployed, in
accordance with the growth or decline in the number of
cardboard collectors and street traders; learn about the
latest developments in the car industry; get up to speed
with news of the fashion world; know the time and the
temperature and even to know all about whatever was
happening on the ground floor - who came in, who went
out, if another delivery of Disco shopping had arrived...
At night, in the windows of cars parked in front of the
house, he could see the reflections of the kitchen lights.
The temperature inside the house was always lower
than on the street, but an approximation of the "real"
temperature was provided by the way in which people
were dressed, and to gauge the time you only had to
follow the haste they were making and the attitudes they
assumed. Occasionally, he caught sight of Rosa: she was
crossing the kitchen garden and heading towards the
gate giving onto the outside street.

He liked to see her. He could feel her come alive: her
face became illuminated as if she had just swallowed an
air bubble, like an infant. But there was something wrong
with the way Rosa looked now... She was walking slowly
and pensively, with her arms folded...

That's the right word: pensively. Rosa leaned her forehead on the bars, and scarcely moved her head to left
and right to look out onto the pavement. She didn't
seem to be waiting for someone, rather to be looking
for them. Possibly, bearing in mind her pensiveness,
perhaps all this was Maria's own fancy. Rosa herself had
shrugged her shoulders. A gentle, constant breeze was
wafting her apron, without lifting it. It had to be six or
seven o'clock in the evening: the shining gold of the
evening made her hair look blacker than ever.

And then, out of the blue, Rosa spun round and stared
upwards, towards the window. Maria had no time at all
in which to take a step back. He stood there, paralysed,
his mind working at the speed of light. If he moved away
from the window, Rosa would notice the movement,
and he'd be discovered.

For the space of a few seconds, which to Maria seemed
like hours, Rosa kept her eyes glued to the gap between
the slats on his venetian blind. Had she seen him and was
she watching him? From her expression, he gathered
that she was not: she stayed where she was, with her
arms crossed. Her face showed not the faintest flicker
of surprise. Surely, he thought, she wouldn't be able to
see him in the darkness of the room, and instead was
reproaching herself over a window she hadn't properly
shut. Nonetheless, Rosa's look was directed at his eye...
Not above nor below his eye, but directly at it.

Rosa ran her tongue over her lips, let her arms fall to
her sides, as if she'd just noticed something dreadful,
and ran into the house at full speed.

Maria cast a glance about the room: no change there,
everything looked exactly the same as it did on the
first day he entered it. He grabbed the Walkman, the
headset and Dr Dyer's book. Then he left the room again, closing the door after him, and ran to hide
himself in the loft.

Rosa reached the attic a minute after him. She had
run upstairs and was out of breath and agitated. She
went straight to Maria's room. But the same impetus
which had brought her thus far did not carry her over
the threshold: she took the final yards leading up to
the door with faltering steps (indoors, up until now, no
gentle breezes blew, yet her apron remained stuck to
her body), as if she wanted to stop but was unable to.

She rested one hand on the handle and opened the
door exceedingly slowly. She paused. For a moment it
looked as if she was sniffing the air in the room, doing
no more than craning her neck to peer inside. Then,
still standing on the landing outside, she looked behind
her, as if she knew someone were watching her from
that side. Finally, she entered.

She went over to the window, one step at a time,
looking to left and right, and up and down, until eventually she closed the venetian blind. Maria noted a
rush of urgency - a rush without fear, a rush of relief,
a return to normality. "It was nothing." She was on the
point of leaving when, all of a sudden, something made
her scream. She let out such a piercing shriek that it was
heard all the way down to the ground floor.

Senor Blinder's voice reached the attic with only a few
seconds' delay:

"Something up?"

Rosa emerged from the room in a series of bunny
hops. She looked as if she was stepping on hot coals.

"A rat!" she squealed as she raced towards the staircase.
Next Ricardo appeared, closely followed by the children.
It was the first time they had been up as far as the attic.
Ricardo looked disconcerted, as if he hadn't the faintest idea of where Rosa might have seen this rat, nor what
on earth he'd do were he unlucky enough also to catch
sight of it, but the children, egged on by the revulsion
of the older members of the family - and most of all by
their father, now that neither Senor or Senora Blinder
showed the least sign of life - ran to and fro like a horde
of banshees.

Maria was terrified they might discover the loft. If they
did, it'd be hard to contain them. Luckily, Ricardo waved
his arms energetically and made jokes, ordering them to
be quiet. The children obeyed.

"It was here," said Rosa, who had just come back in.

She sounded calm: the incident no longer affected her to
the least degree. Once the initial shock had passed, she had
come back upstairs again, because either Senor or Senora
Blinder had asked her to do so, or because she was intent
upon rat-catching. In any case, it was highly likely that this
wasn't the first rat she had ever seen in the house.

"Where?" asked Ricardo.

Rosa waved in the direction of the bedroom.

"But it's gone now..." she said deceptively, "it left thataway..."

"Children, children," summoned Ricardo, calling his
kids, now heading in the direction Rosa had indicated: it
afforded a good pretext to flee.

Maria had closed the door, and was following the scene
through the keyhole. The perspective meant that he
had too wide a field of vision, but he was able to discern
Ricardo and Rosa speaking to one another:

"Fine, if that's the way it is..." said Ricardo, shrugging
his shoulders.

"It will soon put in another appearance..." said Rosa.

Ricardo didn't say another word. He signalled to the
kids, and the three of them set off down the stairs in single file. In the midst of all this Ricardo, suddenly animated,
stretched out his fingers, let out a grunt, then ran after
his kids, who accepted his little game, and rapidly got
away from him: they ran far faster than he did.

Rosa locked the bedroom door, pocketed the key and
followed them down.

17

Up in the attic there was a passage in the shape of an
L. Opening off it there were seven bedrooms, a study,
a playroom (converted into a loft), an ironing room, a
bathroom and two toilets, as well as an enormous open
garret, so deserted that Maria had once nicknamed it
"Africa". All in all, it was no trouble for him to set himself
up in a different room (even though, when Rosa locked
the door and took the key with her, for an instant he felt
as if he had been "left out on the street").

He selected the last bedroom on the left-hand side.
He could scarcely summon the courage to part the
venetian blinds once more: if he had, he would have
been able to see that he was much closer to the street
corner than before. For the time being, however, he
devoted himself to analysing his room: it had the same
measurements as the last, an identical bed, situated in
the same position as before, and with a similar mattress.
He sat himself down, tried it out, looked around him...
There was no wardrobe, just a cupboard, and an
occasional table, positioned against a wall next to the
bed, with three empty drawers and an old round sticker
with the rubric Apple (referencing the Beatles) stuck to
the door. Surely a maid's former bedroom, hip for her
times...

If the rat had behaved in the same manner with Rosa as
it had the first time he saw it (racing around in a circle,
giving the impression that it was on the point of escape,
then returning to its point of departure) it was now most
likely that it was locked up in the room. Why had Rosa
taken the key away in her pocket? None of the remaining
six bedrooms were under lock and key. Why had she
locked that one in particular? During the final months of
their marriage, his parents had slept in separate rooms,
and any time one or other of them left the house, they
locked their bedroom door and took the key away. They
had nothing to hide: most likely they did it to underline
their rejection of the other party. The problem there
was that they only had two bedrooms in the house, his
parents' and his own, which his mother had moved into,
meaning that whenever she left the house he couldn't
get back into his own room. On some occasions, she
would only return late at night. Maria would wake up
in the morning in his own bed only because his mother
would carry him up there in the small hours, gathering
him up from the cane armchair in the dining room
where he had fallen asleep. At other times, if it got too
late, his father would take pity on him and invite him to
come and wait in his bed, but that happened only on
rare occasions, and he was always woken up and moved
on as soon as his father heard the front door open.

18

It was on 3rd January, while Ricardo and Rita were
packing the cases and the youngest children were staring
at the television screen, that Esteban tiptoed into Rosa's
room.

Rosa's reaction on seeing him come in was one of
surprise. She asked him to leave, but Esteban said something in a low voice, a long sentence which resonated like
a hiss, and which seemed to convince her to let him stay
there. A silence followed. Then, whispers interrupted
by odd eruptions of giggles, and the sound of footsteps
pattering across the floor, as if Esteban had run over to
Rosa and had just caught her in his arms...

For a moment, only Rosa spoke. She seemed to be
speaking in chorus:

"Esteban!"

"No, Esteban, someone might come in!..."

"Be quiet..."

"Quiet now, Esteban..."

"No!"

"I told you already, no!"

"Look at you now, eh?"

Now it was Esteban's turn to speak while Rosa remained
silent.

"I'm leaving."

"I thought that... perhaps..."

"OK. I'm sorry."

Silence.

"Are you cross with me?" (Esteban.)

"No..." (Rosa.)

"Are you sure?" asked Esteban.

Rosa nodded, yes.

"But I'm cross with you, really cross," Esteban said.
Rosa raised her eyes to look at him. Esteban added:
"Do you really think I don't know you're going out with
that stupid fat guy with the dimpled flesh?"

"That has nothing to do with it, Esteban. In any
case..."

Silence.

"In any case, what?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, out with it, out with it! I'm too young for
you? Is that what you were going to say? Well, it didn't
seem that way to you last year..."

"That was a game."

"Sure."

"Honestly, I mean it."

"My therapist doesn't happen to think it was a
game."

"You told your therapist about it?"

"Obviously. And you've no idea how hard I had to
plead to stop him from telling my parents everything
too."

"Oh no..."

"The old fellow strung me a line of legal terms. I can
still feel the icy sweat running down my spine, as I felt
then, I promise you. That's how I felt with him, believe
me. Not with you. With you it was different..."

"Why did you tell him all this?"

"Because I pay him, obviously!"

"That's mad..."

"Don't pursue the point, it's not taking us anywhere.
And I can guarantee that this year I'm going back to
London in far worse shape than last year. Since I've
been here, I've had no shut-eye at all... Listen Rosa, I
don't want to hassle you, I don't want you to believe I'm
telling you all this to put pressure on you in order to
make you do anything at all you don't want. It's just that
you made me so happy when..."

"Don't cry..."

"OK. Let's forget about it. It's not your fault. My
behavioural problems, my sudden rages, my nightmares... what do you have to do with any of all that? It was my fault to let myself go along with it. I've been an
idiot..."

"Esteban..."

"I'm leaving. We'll see each other again next year. I
really hope I'll have forgotten all about you by then..."

"Where are your mum and dad?"

"Packing the cases..."

"Have the Senores come home?"

"My grandparents?"

"Yes."

"No, they're still not back."

"We'll have to be really quick."

"Whatever you say, my love."