Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel (30 page)

Something caught María’s attention. A handwritten page, at the back of the file. The declaration of a witness for the prosecution. A witness who declared, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he’d seen Marcelo Alcalá kill Isabel Mola.

The witness was Pedro Recasens.

*   *   *

César Alcalá woke up with a start and went over to the threshold of the room without recognizing where he was. He knew that the cage was real, but it seemed like just a hallucination.

At least, Romero had brought him books. They were all over, on the floor, on the shelves, on the table, and on top of the unmade bed. Some were opened with their covers folded back. In prison he had acquired the bad habit of loving books and mistreating them: he wrote in them, underlined what he was interested in, and many were now missing pages. But it was clear that they, the books, also loved him, that they’d grown accustomed to his compulsive reading, to his impossible way of treating them. They were there, scattered, like orphans awaiting the return to their owner. Reading was his emotional crutch.

He also had cigarettes now. For the first few days he’d looked at the pack nostalgically without daring to touch it, in case it was all just a trick. But then he saw that he could smoke as many as he wanted and, when he ran out, María would diligently bring him another pack. Romero was, undoubtedly, a magician capable of achieving all he set out to.

It barely seemed like a prison lately, but then sometimes, unexpectedly, the image of his daughter came to him, stripped of the vanity she had in life, her hair messy and tangled, bangs covering her green eyes. And then he again had the thoughts of a free man, thoughts that went beyond those walls, beyond the prison routines like making the bed, seeing María, working in the garden, or strolling with Romero. Then he was hounded by the need to escape his prison, to find her. It was inevitable that he thought about what he would do when he found her: where they would go, what things they’d tell each other, where they would start their new life far from all that horrendous past.

But the noise of the cell door closing suddenly, the imperative voice of a guard, or the threatening look of another inmate brought him back to his miserable hole.

That morning Romero was writing, stretched out on his bunk. César Alcalá never asked to whom he was writing those long letters every day. It wasn’t his business. And curiosity was an instinct that in those walls hibernated until it almost vanished. It was Romero himself who spread out the pages on the bedspread with a satisfied air.

“That’s it, done.”

César Alcalá looked at him out of the corner of his eye. His cellmate looked really happy. So much so that he pulled a small bottle of gin out from behind a tile and offered him a furtive slug.

“What are we celebrating?”

Romero opened his arms, as if it were obvious.

“It’s finished, my first novel. The subject isn’t very original, I know: it’s about prison.” Romero grew thoughtful. Then he started to pile up the pages filled with cramped handwriting. “Actually it’s not a physical jail, it’s not a building with bars and guards … It’s another kind of prison.”

For the first time since they’d met, César Alcalá saw Romero unsure, almost ashamed. His cellmate handed him the pile of pages.

“I’d like you to read it.”

“Why me?”

“Because, in a way, you are the main character.”

César Alcalá looked at Romero with surprise.

Romero looked at the floor, rubbing out a cigarette butt with his shoe. Then he sat in front of the window that looked out on the fenced-in patio. Some prisoners were playing on the basketball court, undeterred by the rain.

“You can’t fool me with your bitterness, Alcalá. I’ve been here many years, I’ve had all kinds of roommates, good and bad. I’ve seen it all: riots, murders, friendships, love affairs … And I know what’s going on with you. I’ve been watching you. Sooner or later you’ll get out of here. That lawyer who comes to visit you every day will manage to get you out. And then, once you’re outside, you won’t be able to hide behind these four walls.”

“What’s this all about, Romero?”

Romero turned toward Alcalá.

“You read the novel. If you don’t like it, burn it … And if you do like it, burn it anyway. But that won’t change things. I know who you are, and I know what’s inside you, waiting to awaken.”

In that moment a guard appeared at the cell door. César Alcalá had a visitor.

“Say hi to your lawyer from me,” said Romero, lying down in his bunk for a smoke.

When César Alcalá went into the visiting room, María’s face was unflappable, lifeless. She stood there, leaning against the wall with her hands crossed over her purse. She looked like a plaster statue.

The guard took the inspector’s handcuffs off and left, closing the door. Through the barred glass peephole, he remained attentive.

“Is everything okay?” asked Alcalá, massaging his wrists.

María had told him about her headaches and dizzy spells that sometimes meant she had to sit down wherever she was and press her head into her hands, until the dizziness passed, leaving an increasingly insistent migraine that was now almost constant. She had promised that she’d go to the doctor, but César Alcalá didn’t trust that she had. While they weren’t friends, there was at least a current of intuitions between them that allowed them to understand each other without really knowing each other very well.

“Headaches again?”

María looked at the inspector for more than a minute in silence. She slowly opened her purse and took out an old, yellowed piece of paper.

“Do you know what this is? I put my reputation on the line taking it out of the archive of the Bar Association without permission.”

César Alcalá took the page and examined it carefully. Then he was plunged into a deep, thoughtful silence.

“Did you lie to me, César?” asked María. With a tone of voice that answered its own question, in the affirmative.

César Alcalá ran a hand over his forehead. He turned his back to María, who remained pressed to the wall, wondering if it was time to be honest with her.

“Lying, telling half-truths, keeping things quiet … what’s the difference?”

María got mad. The last thing she needed at that moment was for him to make her feel stupid.

“Don’t use that cynical tone with me. I’m not your cellmate or one of the guards that watch over you.”

César Alcalá looked at her coldly.

“There isn’t an ounce of irony in my words. I’m speaking completely seriously … You want to know if I knew Recasens? Yes, I knew him. Does that mean I lied to you? It means much more than that, but there are answers that I can’t give you.”

That was too much for María, who let her indignation fly.

“You knew about Pedro Recasens long before he showed up in my life. He is the man who turned in your father. It was his declaration that sent him to the gallows. This declaration. And all this time you let me go on and on about the old colonel, as if you didn’t know who he was.”

César Alcalá looked at her without saying anything. Prison had taught him to take things calmly. Before wasting words he preferred to listen carefully, examining the cutting look the woman gave him, her tense fingers wrinkling the declaration by old Recasens. María was still the same arrogant, vain, conceited lawyer who had sent him to prison. She was trying to discipline that arrogance, but without realizing it she was acting like they were in court and he was once again on trial.

“You are very sure that you know me, aren’t you, María?” he said calmly. “Nothing escapes your control. You trust your intelligence and your intuition to the end.” After a pause, he added, “But you shouldn’t make the same error twice: you made a mistake judging people years ago. That should have taught you that you can’t know what is in someone’s soul. Maybe everything in the files on your desk is black and white. But here, with real people, that Manichean perspective doesn’t fly: we humans are painted in shades of gray. Like me. Like you.”

María didn’t know what to say. She was rarely caught off guard. But César had just done it. The words she had wanted to say vanished in her mind.

César Alcalá felt satisfied, noting the lawyer’s confusion. With a more decisive tone, but without losing his cool, he continued.

“For you I’m a prisoner, although you make an effort to erase that stigma from your mind. But you can’t; I see it in your eyes. I wanted to kill a man, and I almost did. I am guilty, and therefore my imprisonment could be considered fair. That’s why my attitude bugs you. You think that I should be grateful for your company, your friendship. You think that I don’t show you enough admiration or respect in spite of the fact that you spend your time and energy in helping me find a lead on my daughter’s disappearance or a legal loophole that can get me out of here … And you’re right. I’m not grateful to you; I don’t owe you anything, I don’t feel indebted to you, and of course I don’t consider myself your friend. I know why you are here: for Publio. Not for me. Recasens and your ex-husband convinced you to do something good, a noble and just action: ‘Convince that stubborn guy to tell you where he is hiding the evidence against Publio. Promise him that we’ll find his daughter, that we’ll get him out off jail, whatever it takes. But convince him.’ That’s what they told you, right? But you don’t care that the evidence that I’m hiding is the only guarantee—perhaps false, maybe an illusion—but the only one I have, that my daughter is still alive. As long as I don’t talk, she keeps breathing. That’s not your concern, is it? As soon as I tell you where those papers are, you’ll disappear, because your just mission will be accomplished. Then you’ll walk through those somber gates and never return. You will go out into the street with hasty steps to breathe fresh air and thank God for your freedom. And I don’t judge you for that. I have no right to do so. Maybe you’re right. I am a prisoner. And therefore, guilty. But what about you? You are also carrying around an outstanding guilt, a guilt that isn’t yours to bear, by the way, but which you’re responsible for, in spite of it all. And just as I pay for mine, you should pay for yours.

“You want answers to questions that will lead you to places you can’t even imagine. I knew Pedro Recasens, it’s true. He came to see me three months ago. He told me about his declaration against my father … forty years later! I spent my entire life thinking that my father was a fraud, a murderer of women. I became a cop just to be the opposite of what he was … And suddenly this ghost from the past turns up and tells me that it was all a farce devised by Publio to cover up a crime by one of his men. Doesn’t it seem strange to you? This CESID agent shows up to tell me that, if I want, I can avenge my father’s death forty years later … And then you show up, with your guilt, your remorse, your promises … You say that Recasens insists that you and I are linked through Isabel Mola … Maybe we are, or maybe it’s nothing more than bullshit, another farce … Now, what’s truth and what’s a lie, María? Who should I trust? You? In that old man who’s already dead? No. The only thing I can trust is my own silence. You say you want to help me. If that’s true, if you really want to help me, get me out of here and give me a gun. I’ll take care of Publio. And I can assure you that this time I’ll find out where my daughter is. Will you do it?”

María had been curling up over herself, unable to bear that cold, almost freezing, torrent of words, devoid of hatred but also of pity.

“Will you do it? Will you help me escape from here?” insisted César, getting very close to María’s face, almost touching her.

“I can’t do that,” stammered María, swallowing hard. “It’s against the law … I’m sure we can find a legal way … a pardon … something…”

César Alcalá held up his hand to ask that she not continue along that path. Too many lawyers had promised him similar things, and he no longer had patience to keep listening to the same old song.

“Then, if you aren’t going to help me, don’t come back here to assuage your conscience. You won’t find any more understanding from me, or answers to your questions. I’m not a saint.” Alcalá stood up and extended his hands toward the door where the guard waited, asking wordlessly for him to put his handcuffs back on. But first he turned to look at the lawyer. “Before we part, let me tell you something: You are trusting Lorenzo to keep you safe from Ramoneda, right? You are making a mistake. For weeks I’ve been giving reports on our conversations to the congressman’s man who comes to see me periodically. I tell him what you and I talked about, and he hands me a note written by my daughter. It’s my proof that she’s still alive. That man, whom I’ve never told you about, is Lorenzo, your ex-husband. The same one who got you into this, the one who promised to save you from Ramoneda and then used you as bait to get that maniac out of his lair. The same one who will leave you to your fate as soon as Publio decides to eliminate you, like he did with Recasens. He sold him out, or let them kill him, which is the same thing. You wanted answers; there, you have one. You see how bitter the truth can be, a little slice of truth, María. And how wrong your choices are.”

*   *   *

That afternoon María Bengoechea called Greta. She needed to talk to someone she knew, cling to something lovable, hear a friendly voice. But the only thing she heard was the ringing on the other side of a line that nobody picked up. She left the phone on the bed and went out on the balcony to smoke a cigarette.

She felt bewildered. Just a few short weeks earlier she was a completely different person, with pretty clear horizons. She had her problems, like everybody; her level of dissatisfaction at work was more or less acceptable, and she had those little daydreams that allowed to her to keep on living without taking up too much of her energy. But suddenly, there she was, leaning on the railing of her balcony with views of the sea, fighting with the wind to light a cigarette, the sky covered by coal-colored clouds, feeling that things were sifting through her fingers, that her life as she knew it was about to collapse. Crying without knowing whether it was in rage, self-pity, or despair. She was alone in that maelstrom of betrayal and lies.