Rage (19 page)

Then his eyes glazed over - with loathing, not with pain
- and he saw the rat.

Was it the same rat, his friend, his companion?

Maria stayed stock-still, as though made of air and
light, one cheek resting against one of the glass walls.
He widened his eyes when he felt someone (something)
looking at him, and saw it. The rat was three or four yards
away from him. It maintained a certain distance from the
wall, and as if no longer needing to hug the skirting board,
as if in the very act of looking at him it had evolved - or
leaped - into an intermediate state somewhere between
that of its own species and of his.

In fact the rat was regarding him as a dog would. Maria
could even see that now it was gently waving its tail. But
- was it the same one?

Had it survived the dose of poison? Or had it died and
this was its wife, who came to resume the friendship?
They looked at each other for a long time, both of them
utterly immobile. Until all of a sudden the rat took a
step towards him. The tiny step forwards of a humanized
rat.

"Yes, it's me," it seemed to be saying.

Maria thought it would have to be far easier for a rat
to recognize a man than for a man to recognize a rat.

He let one arm drop to his side, quietly extending his
hand along the floor, inviting the rat to approach him.
Then the rat made a half-turn and fled at full speed.

Maria closed his eyes again.

Yes, in the end it was a stroke of luck that his mother
hadn't wanted to see him again. Neither him nor his
fake father, or however much of a real father he might
have been.

23

"Rosa?..."

Silence.

He hung up.

24

He had never imagined a winter indoors, inside a villa,
could be that tough. He retrieved his work clothes from
his knapsack, and wore them all at once: two shirts, two
pairs of trousers, pants, socks, and he added a jumper,
belonging to Senor Blinder, that he'd stolen one afternoon from the top shelf of his wardrobe.

The walls were literally freezing. The metal slats of
the venetian blinds, however, had gone to the other
extreme: they were so cold they were burning. Sometimes in the mornings, but most of all at night, the
wind made a noise like a raging banshee, inserting
fine blades into the narrowest cracks which the air - its
brother - would have been unable to penetrate.

The lights on the ground floor were always left on.
Sequestered in his room, Maria did his daily exercises:
a hundred arm flexes, a hundred abdominal crunches
- slowly, one after the other, giving each equal weight,
equal concentration, just as much as he would have
bestowed on every kiss he gave Rosa.

He no longer missed her, yet not a minute went by
without his thinking of her.

And he no longer wanted to see her. At times he
even turned his back on her, when she came upstairs
to clean the room, wash out the toilets, run the vacuum
cleaner over the floors or wipe the windows (occasions
on which she always, like any other woman doing the
same thing, seemed so utterly absented). The phantom
desired only to remain a phantom. Wherever it had
hidden itself away, each time Rosa came upstairs to
clean the attic, he (religiously) turned his back on
her, as if it were some part of his feng shui. Maria's
adoration for her was so great that he had had to
become a mystic in order to deny her without dying
himself.

25

This "relapse" (the telephone call during which he
could manage no more than to say her name and, after a silence which said no more than "?...", hang up) took
place on 7th June. From then on, nothing more occurred
to encourage him to ring her. Rather, it would have been
a distraction.

He was truly in an altered state of being. His body still
expressed it better than his soul or his psychology: his
very fibres were as stretched as if they were all nerve
endings, absorbed within an aura of contained force,
with the briefest of shivers here and there, from top to
toe, resembling nervous tics or miniature explosions.
The contrast between his appearance and some of his
pastimes (reading best-sellers, carving soap sculptures)
could not have been greater. Intellectually, he was light
years behind an average child, even in terms of wisdom:
he existed as if in a glove whose extremities both touched
and were touched (the butterfly and the petal). This
was he, who a year earlier would have boasted that he
was all streetwise...

All his artistry was concentrated in the shape of a soap
canoe (without either oars or rowers). Despite this, he
had constructed a double invisibility for himself and
for everyone else, and all out of (he could hardly bring
himself to write the word) spite. His crime obliged him
to hide himself away, but his spitefulness made a monk
out of him.

26

"Hello, Rosa?"

How long it had been since he had spoken her name!
Not even he could believe it.

Rosa, at the other end of the line, was as surprised as
he was.

"Maria?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Oh my God..."

"How are you?"

"Where are you?"

"Forgive me for not ringing you in so long, but I
wanted to suggest something to you..." he said. There
was a pause, and amid the silence in the house you
could hear Rosa's irregular breathing from both ends
of the line, sounding like a gasp.

"Would you like to meet me?"

"What happened?" asked Rosa.

For an instant, Maria was unsure whether her question
referred to his invitation, as if the fact of his wanting
to see her would necessarily mean that something bad
had happened, or whether it was no more than the old
question, born of anxiety, which she had repeatedly
posed him from the beginning.

He decided it must be the latter and a fragile hint of
sadness rippled delicately up his spine: why, in spite of
all that had happened, did Rosa still appear to be stuck
in the same place? Was this really the only thing that
mattered to her?

"Look Rosa," he said, "first of all there's been something
I've wanted to say to you for a long time and, for one
reason or another, I've kept on forgetting. There's a
book called Your Erroneous Zones. I want you to read it.
Look it out in the villa's library, I'm sure your employers
will have a copy. It's called Your Erroneous Zones. On the
cover there's a picture of a man half-leaning forwards,
made up of words. I kept wanting to tell you. It has to be
good luck that I've finally remembered it. Now let's get
on with talking about ourselves..."

"Maria? Are you well? Your voice sounds different..."

"Did you hear what I told you? Would you like us to
meet?"

"Are you serious?"

Maria nodded.

But Rosa couldn't see him, so she repeated the question:

"Are you serious?"

"Yes," said Maria. "Would you like us to meet up?"

"What happened?"

They had come back to their starting point. At this
point, Maria could observe the usual circularity of their
dialogues, and use it to revise his plan.

Which he did from the beginning.

His resistance to assimilating what had been going on
in the house was so great that he knew even less about
what by nowwas impossible to ignore. But one afternoon,
five days earlier, he had heard Senora Blinder exclaim:

"Rosa, oh my God!"

That expression awoke his curiosity.

He went downstairs. It was months since he had
descended to the first floor in daytime.

Ten minutes later he came back upstairs again. He
shut himself in his room and stayed there crouched in
a corner. His heart was thumping heavily. Those ten
minutes had been sufficient for him to accumulate a
sequence of facts and indicators (visual fragments, odd
sentences) for him now to create a panorama of the
main events of the most recent period, like someone
putting their hand in the water and taking out a fistful of
earth or sand in order to later analyse the composition
of the subsoil.

What he discovered meant that the protective wall he
had erected between himself and the house fractured
at a stroke:

a) Rosa was pregnant;

b) Israel didn't want to know.

The second point filled him with loathing. The first
with pain. Rosa pregnant...

Now he had seen for himself. Senora Blinder was
standing in front of Rosa. He saw Senora Blinder come
in, but Rosa was bisected vertically by the door frame
and the only part of her in his line of vision was precisely
her abdomen: she was stroking it at a speed more fitting
to that of a satisfied customer than of a mother. Maybe it
made her ashamed, or maybe she was afraid of what the
Senora was about to say... It was a small bump, but it was
definitely there. Of this there was absolutely no doubt.

Senora Blinder swivelled on her heels, turning her
back on him, and then swung round again, to go towards
Rosa, evidently nervous. Rosa allowed a sob to escape
her. Senora Blinder put her arms around her.

It was probably the first time she had ever embraced
her, since Rosa took a rapid pace backwards, either in
fear or surprise. The two then stood outside his field of
vision.

He descended a few more steps, and carefully craned
his neck forwards. Yes, they were definitely embracing.
Actually, only Senora Blinder was really doing the
embracing. Rosa's arms were dangling at her sides.

"Who is the father?"

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

Senora Blinder detached herself and, without letting
her go completely, looked her in the eyes. Suddenly she
looked very serious, as if Rosa were playing her a wild
card or making a bad joke.

"Rosa," she said, "I could have told you to pack your
bag and move on, now couldn't I? Yet, in spite of all this,
I'm still here and I want to help you."

"If you tell me to, I'll leave right away..."

"Don't you ever say such a thing in front of me again!
Are we clear?" Senora Blinder replied, making the sign
of the cross.

"Yes, Senora. Nor would I have..."

"That's enough. Let's begin again. Who is the father?"

"Israel, Senora."

"Who is Israel?"

"The fellow who lives here, on the corner, Senora...
He lives at number 1525, on the fourth floor."

"Who lives there on the fourth floor?"

"Israel, Senora. I'm sure you know him actually, he
told me that you always greet one another as you pass by
on the street, and that one time you stopped and spoke
to him. Do you remember the boyfriend I once had,
called Maria?"

"Maria?"

`Jose Maria, but I called him Maria. Israel told me that
on one occasion he spoke to you over that matter with
the police, who came round to check if..."

"Israel Vargas!"

"Yes, Senora."

"Unbelievable..."

Senora Blinder made another half-turn and crossed
the bottom of the staircase, going towards her room,
walking slowly and thoughtfully. Maria backed off and
managed to escape by a hair's breadth. A second later,
Rosa also passed by. No doubt, Senora Blinder had
signalled for her to draw closer.

"Very well, we need to talk to him," said Senora Blinder.
"I assume he will take responsibility..."

Maria didn't listen any further. He retreated one step
at a time, like a solid shadow, and shut himself in his
room. His walls had just collapsed in on him.

His head was spinning. His nausea was not the result
of having been "absent" for so long: it was his re-entry
into that world which shattered him. Rosa pregnant...
and by none other than Israel. If only Senora Blinder
had thrown her out onto the street... After all it had
been a long time since he'd even thought of her...
He would have preferred to wake one morning to the
news that Rosa was no longer there than to learn of her
pregnancy.

He had worked hard with all his might to forget
her and, in the process, had transformed himself into
another man. And he was the better for it. Of the old
Maria, he had conserved the agility - even though he
was no longer as strong, nor as robust - and all the rest
had changed. He was more spiritual: he could have
borne anything. His goal in staying in the house was no
longer to escape imprisonment. This was a matter he no
longer even thought about. It would have been more
appropriate for him simply to disappear. It was enough
for him to set foot upon this peak of human indifference
for a pregnancy to come along and sabotage it all! Rage
and pain rose through his body like hot flames. He felt
indignant, disgusted and at the same time fearful. Had
he really learned anything about either himself or the
house?

What about Senora Blinder, for example? What did he
really know about her? He knew nothing at all beyond
what he could imagine. The proof was that Senora
Blinder had just demonstrated herself to be gentle,
understanding and even fair towards Rosa, rather than
cold and rejecting. That very night Senora Blinder had
even, after telling the news to her husband (who was
indeed cold and scornful), defended Rosa with a set of
arguments as moving as they were fruitless, a force of nature before which her husband could do little else
but weaken:

"Do what you like."

The next day it appeared that Senora Blinder had
indeed gone to speak to Israel. Rosa anxiously awaited
her return. When she got back, Senora Blinder slipped
an arm about her waist and swept her out of Maria's
sight, saying:

"We're going to have to take charge of this ourselves.
To start with..."

At that instant, Maria took his decision. The same night
he rose and got dressed, went downstairs with his shoes
in his hand, took the key to the kitchen door, opened
it, went out, locked it again from the outside, put on
his shoes, crossed the side garden to the kitchen gate,
opened it, went out, locked it again from the outside,
crossed the street and disappeared into the darkness.
He was absolutely certain no one had seen him.