The Wind From the East (71 page)
Read The Wind From the East Online
Authors: Almudena Grandes
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Contemporary Women
During the days that Maribel spent in the hospital, and later, while she was convalescing, Sara moved Alfonso and the children into her own home. She did so as if it were the most natural thing in the world, without explaining why it was necessary—either to Juan and Maribel, or to herself. “It seems like a good idea,” was all that Juan had said when he found out. He didn’t exactly thank her,just as Sara had not exactly asked his permission when she told him what she was intending to do. But it was no longer a question of standing on ceremony or favors between them, and perhaps this was why the children didn’t ask any questions either.They’d always had fun together, but this was different.Andrés and Tamara were model guests.They ate everything that was put in front of them, carried their plates to the kitchen when they’d finished, accepted her suggestion that they have their bath or brush their teeth as if it were an order, and when Sara suggested they all go out—for a walk on the beach, or a meal, or to the cinema—they never argued, although Alfonso’s comical attempts to imitate them made them burst out laughing. Sara smiled as she bent down to pick up the broken plates that resulted from his clowning, but in truth she never truly felt worried about the children.
It wasn’t true that children would adapt to anything, endure anything, and Sara knew this. Tamara was still very scared. She was frightened of any shadow, any noise and of strangers. A gust of wind making the awning creak, the telephone ringing late at night, the wheels of a car screeching, or someone suddenly turning to ask her the time, made her tremble and turned her voice into that of a pathetic little sparrow as she asked:“What was that? Did you hear that?”The second night of Tamara’s stay, Sara couldn’t sleep and she heard her coming. It was twenty to four in the morning, over five hours since she’d put her to bed, but when she heard the door handle being turned slowly by a fearful little hand, Sara knew it could only be Tamara. The little girl tiptoed across the room, slipped quietly under the covers, moved her foot carefully until it was touching Sara’s leg, and instantly fell asleep.
“I had a horrible dream,” she explained the following morning. “I dreamed that I was in my old house in Madrid. I was in the bathroom, and my mother was alive, and she was brushing my hair. She kept telling me to be still, but I knew it couldn’t be real, because she was dead, and I didn’t dare tell her. And she just went on brushing my hair, talking to me and kissing me as if she were still alive. And she had to still be alive because I was the same age I am now, and I was wearing the dress I had on yesterday. But then I woke up, and I realized it wasn’t true, of course, because Mama’s dead, but I’d believed it, so it was suddenly like she’d died all over again.When she had the accident, I used to have this dream a lot. Now I only have it sometimes, but it goes away if I get into Juan’s bed. That’s why I came to sleep with you last night. I hope you didn’t mind.”
“No, of course not.” Sara smiled. “If you like, you can sleep with me every night, until you dream about something else.”
“Great!” Looking very relieved,Tamara gave her a kiss.“But don’t tell Andrés, OK? If he finds out he’ll say I’m a baby.You know what he’s like.”
But Sara didn’t know what Andrés was like.At night, she would sometimes chat to Tamara for hours.The girl would ask her questions—what was her room like when she was a little girl, her school, her friends? What marks did she get and what was her favorite toy—and then she’d answer the same questions herself, attributing as much value to Sara’s curiosity as to her own. Finally she’d close her eyes and fall asleep, plunging into sleep as if into a swimming pool, while Sara remained awake, thinking about her former closeness to Andrés. This special child, the first person who’d become important to her when she moved into her new home, was gradually filling up with all the screams, tears, anger, and words that he hadn’t allowed himself to express. Like a dam ready to burst, Andrés hadn’t grieved properly over his mother’s injury yet. At least not outwardly. Sara didn’t know where he went when he disappeared mid-afternoon without telling her or giving any hint of his destination. “I’m going out,” he’d announce in neutral tones at the door, and not even Tamara dared say she’d go with him. She and Sara assumed he wanted to go out alone on his new bike—the ultra-light silver mountain bike he’d been presented with at the start of the summer—so they stayed at home with Alfonso, watching TV or baking a cake, waiting for him to come back.When he did return, he seemed as placid and calm as before, and was always ready to taste the cake, lay the table, or play a game. But his willingness to join in did not conceal his complete indifference to the world around him, including them. Sara felt like shaking the boy, slapping him, forcing him to spit out the slow anger, the shame and grief that was poisoning him, turning him into nothing more than a robot. She tried to talk to him, but ended up chatting to herself when she came up against the brick wall of his silence. She would have given anything to wake him up and convince him that whatever happened, she’d always be there for him, she’d always be on his side.Yet she never felt truly worried about him, because it wasn’t true that children would simply put up with everything, and she knew that sooner or later, Maribel’s son would have to find his own path back to screaming and crying and feeling again. Sara was sure he’d manage it eventually. But still, Andrés’s absence, his blank stares, his forced, empty smiles, the sudden awkwardness of his arms and legs, took her back to her anxiety in Juan’s car, when Maribel had almost died and she’d felt it was all her fault.
At the beginning, there had been Andrés, so helpless, so lost in his hand-me-downs, the ridiculous flowery swimming trunks that were too big for him, and the green T-shirt that was so tight Sara could see his ribs through it when he appeared at the kitchen door, always holding one of those little toys you get inside chocolate eggs. This was how she explained her tenderness, the instant affection she felt for the child, a little boy so greedy for images, for names and sounds, for distant cities that were much more than mere points on a map, for mythic animals and real monsters, for emotion, for vivid colors, for depth.As she spoke to him and told him about her travels, as she asked him about the winds, she had fed his curiosity and turned it into faith, had given shape and solid ambition to it, before inspiring a different ambition in his mother. She never thought she was succumbing to Doña Sara’s weakness in doing this.And she hadn’t wanted to adopt the equivocal mantle of a benefactor when she decided to introduce a little arithmetic and common sense into Maribel’s hare-brained schemes. And yet, especially at the beginning when Maribel was still so weak, Sara sometimes felt tempted to consider another version of reality. Sara Gómez Morales, with plenty of money and time on her hands, tied to the memory of the few things that had belonged to her and whose only ambition for the future was to accept her aging, had slipped almost without realizing it into Maribel’s life, but hadn’t recognized herself in the poor, unlucky girl, with family burdens but no home of her own, whom she’d pushed just as she’d always pushed herself.
When fate wearies of being stubborn, it is cruel, and Sara had more than enough reason to distrust patrons, philanthropists, and do-gooders. Sara knew the price of privilege, the cost that lurked on the flipside of every reward, every smile, every gift, the casual, lazy way anything good could be snatched away as abruptly and arbitrarily as it had previously been bestowed. But time doesn’t progress in a straight line. Sara thought of herself, of Maribel, of things that were as they were and couldn’t be changed. If Maribel had died, Sara would never have been able to forgive herself for convincing her that her life was so poor, so unfair, and so thankless that Maribel would have swapped it, with no regrets, for a dream of a new, different life that had resulted in nothing but her death. But Maribel was still alive and she had survived—not Sara’s good intentions, nor Juan’s best intentions, but her ex-husband’s knife. Time would go on passing, and some day it would start to work in her favor, to fade all the pain and fear. When this occurred, they—Sara and Maribel,Andrés and the Olmedos—might still be together in the same place, or they might be far apart, but they would always remember the events that had united them that summer. Sara was sure of this. In her mind, all the images and fragments of the story began to merge into an extravagant fictional plot that was suddenly made flesh one morning, when a loud clicking of high heels came to a stop outside Maribel’s room, announcing a visitor that no one was expecting.
The woman was very young, twenty-five at most. She wore a lot of make-up and huge hoop earrings, and her hair was dyed red. Her body was rather bulky, and her uniform too tight. She unconsciously drew attention to it by tugging at the edges of her clothing all the time, never managing to smooth out the waist or stop the skirt riding up at the front. As she observed this battle, Sara got the impression that the woman’s size put her in a bad mood, something that might have made her seem more agreeable had she not soon demonstrated that she was, indeed, in a bad mood. She was chewing gum, and appeared to be in a hurry, glancing at her watch as soon as she came in. She went straight over to Maribel’s bed without paying attention to anyone else in the room.
“Hello. My name’s Aguirre, I’m from the police.”
Sara was in an armchair beside the bed. She looked up and saw Alfonso, who was sitting on the unoccupied bed, suddenly look confused and cover his face with his hands. In the other armchair,Andrés also hid his face, bending right over and hugging his legs, resting his forehead on his knees.Tamara was standing beside him, looking bewildered and unsure what to do. Meanwhile, the woman opened a file, unfolded a sheet of paper and began reading, pointing to each paragraph with her pen, as if Maribel couldn’t read.
“I’m sorry,” said Sara, standing up. She moved closer to the bed but decided it wasn’t worth introducing herself. “I don’t think the children should be here for this.”
Aguirre turned around, looked at her a moment without asking who she was, and nodded.
“Yes, I’ve just realized that.Would you mind taking them out? And it would be better if you waited outside as well.”
“No way,” Sara thought to herself,“no way.” She went out into the corridor with the children, and suggested they go to the cafeteria.“I’ll give you money for a milkshake, or a Coke and fries, anything you like,” she said,“you’ll only get bored if you hang around here.”Tamara and Alfonso agreed, silently, but Andrés refused.
“No, no,” he said, and then as if two “nos” weren’t enough, he shook his head before going on: “I don’t want anything to eat or drink, and I don’t feel like talking.You go if you want. I’m staying here.”
Had this been any other day,Tamara would have stamped her foot and complained: “Oh, Andrés, you always ruin everything!” And Alfonso would have repeated her last words like a parrot:“Ruin everything!” But that morning, they said nothing and simply sat down on the bench in the corridor. Sara was surprised by their sudden unanimity, but couldn’t detect anything new or different between them. Aguirre, on the other hand, reminded her of the midwife who had attended her many years earlier, in another hospital, when she’d had her ectopic pregnancy and all her plans came crashing down around her ears. Sara had also been in a bad mood, fed up, tired, and desperate to go home.“I feel terrible, absolutely dreadful,” she’d said at last, tired of the midwife’s resentful looks and her impatience,“don’t you understand?”The midwife looked down her nose at her and replied,“Well, if only you knew how I’m feeling,” and at that moment Sara hated her more than she’d ever hated anyone before. Later, lying numb and alone, with the rest of her life ahead of her, she was amazed by how violently she had reacted, how viciously she had inwardly wished the woman dead. “Die, you bitch!” she repeated to herself like a litany, a spell to escape the long tunnel she felt she was in.“Die, you bitch!” The midwife had simply been in a hurry, wanting to finish things off and go home. Perhaps she had problems as serious, as bad as Sara’s, but still Sara had wished her dead, and she wasn’t about to leave Maribel on her own, wishing the policewoman dead.When she went back inside the room, closing the door behind her, the woman didn’t even glance at her. She’d stopped listing the resources that the State made available to victims of domestic abuse and was addressing Maribel in a different, more direct tone.
“There’s nothing to think about, seriously, take my advice.” She glanced at her watch, took out a pile of forms, and went on:“If you don’t report the assault, you risk not only a second attack, but also becoming your attacker’s accomplice.”
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