Four Novels (21 page)

“It’s very pleasant,” Pierre said softly.

Some time went by. Maria should have told Pierre again: “You know, it’s crazy, but Rodrigo Paestra is really there, on the roof. Opposite. And with daybreak, he’ll be caught.”

Maria said nothing.

“You’re tired, Maria?” Pierre asked even more softly.

“Less than usual. The storm I suppose. It feels better.”

“Yes,” Claire said, “we’re less tired than the other nights.”

She wasn’t sleeping. A gust of wind put out the last light. Lightning again at the end of the corridor. Maria turned slightly, but you couldn’t see the roof from where they were.

“It will never stop,” Pierre said. “Do you want me to put the light back on, Maria?”

“It’s not worth it. I like it like that.”

“I like it too,” Claire went on again.

She stopped talking. Maria knew it: Pierre was hoping she would fall asleep. He was no longer smoking and lay motionless against the wall. But Claire was talking again.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll have to reserve rooms in Madrid by noon.”

“We should, yes.”

She yawned. Pierre and Maria were waiting for her to fall asleep. It was raining hard. Can you die if you want to from having to bear the brunt of a storm? Maria seemed to remember that it was Rodrigo Paestra’s dead shape that she had seen on the roof.

Maria knew that Pierre wasn’t sleeping, that he was aware of her, Maria, his wife, and that the desire he felt for Claire was becoming corrupted by the memory of his wife; that he was becoming gloomy for fear she had guessed something; that he was disturbed at the thought of Maria’s new loneliness, tonight, compared to what had been before.

“Are you sleeping?”

“No.”

They had spoken very softly once more. They were waiting. Yes, this time, Claire was asleep.

“What time is it?” Maria asked.

With the end of the rain, there came the policemen whom Rodrigo Paestra must have also heard. Pierre looked at his watch in the light of the cigarette he had just started.

“Eleven twenty. Do you want a cigarette?”

Maria did.

“It’s already lighter,” Pierre said. “Maybe it’s clearing up now. Here, Maria.”

He handed it to her. They sat up a little, just long enough for him to light it, then they lay down again. At the end of the corridor, Maria saw the dark blue screen of the balcony.

“Nights like this are so long,” Pierre said.

“Yes. Try to sleep.”

“And you?”

“I would like a manzanilla. But it’s impossible.”

Pierre waited before answering. A last cloudburst, very light, fell on Rodrigo Paestra. You could hear singing and laughing in the street. The police, once again. But in the corridor all was quiet.

“Won’t you try to drink a little less, Maria? Just once?”

“No,” Maria said. “No more.”

The earthy smell came up from the street, endless, the smell of tears along with its complement, the smell of wet, fully ripened wheat. Was she going to tell him: “It’s crazy, Pierre, but Rodrigo Paestra is there. There. Right there. And with daybreak he will be caught.”

She said nothing. It was he who spoke.

“You remember? Verona?”

“Yes.”

If he reached out, Pierre would touch Maria’s hair. He had spoken of Verona. Of love all night, the two of them, in a bathroom in Verona. A storm too, and it was summer, and the hotel was full. “Come, Maria.” He was wondering. “When, when will I have enough of you?”

“Give me another cigarette,” Maria said.

He gave it to her. This time she didn’t sit up.

“If I spoke to you about Verona, it’s because I couldn’t help it.”

The smell of mud and wheat came in whiffs into the corridor. The hotel was bathed in this odor, as well as the town, Rodrigo Paestra and his dead, and the inexhaustible but perfectly vain memory of a night of love in Verona.

Claire was sleeping soundly. Then she turned suddenly and moaned because of the recent stir of Pierre’s hands, that night, on her body.

Pierre also heard Claire’s moan. It was over. Claire grew quiet. And Maria next to Pierre only heard the sound of children breathing, and the police kept marching by more and more regularly as morning came closer.

“You’re not asleep?”

“No,” said Maria. “What time is it?”

“A quarter to twelve”—he was waiting. “Here, have another cigarette.”

“All right. At what time is dawn in Spain?”

“Very early at this time of year.”

“I wanted to tell you, Pierre.”

She took the cigarette that he was holding out to her. Her hand trembled a little. He waited until he was lying down again before asking her.

“What do you want to tell me, Maria?”

Pierre waited a long time for an answer which didn’t come. He didn’t insist. Both of them were smoking, lying on their backs because of the tiles that bruised their hips. You had to surfer this bruise as best you could. She couldn’t remove the free end of Judith’s blanket that was covering her without being exposed to Pierre’s look. She could only try to close her eyes between each puff of her cigarette, open them again, without moving at all, keeping quiet.

“Lucky we found this hotel,” Pierre said

“Lucky, yes.”

He was smoking faster than she. He had finished his cigarette. He put it out in the narrow space between him and Maria, in the middle of the corridor, between the sleeping bodies. The showers lasted only a short length of time now, the length of one of Claire’s sighs.

“You know Maria. I love you.”

Maria also was through with her cigarette, she put it out, just like Pierre, on an empty tile in the corridor.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

What was happening? What was in the air? Was this really the end of the storm? Whenever there were showers, it was like pails of water spilled on the skylight and the roofs. A sound of showering that would only last a few seconds. They should have fallen asleep before this phase of the storm. Have accepted the idea of this last night before this moment.

“You must sleep, Maria.”

“Yes. But the noise,” she said.

She could do it, she could turn over and find herself right against him. They would get up. They would go away together far from Claire’s sleep whose memory would grow dimmer with the passing of night. He knew it.

“Maria, Maria. You are my love.”

“Yes.”

She hadn’t moved. In the street, more whistling announced that dawn was close, always closer. There was no more lightning, except weak and far away. Claire moaned again because of the memory of Pierre’s hands clasping her hips. But that too you became accustomed to like the soft scraping noise of the children breathing. And the smell of rain engulfed the uniqueness of Claire’s desire, mixing it with the sea of desire which, that night, raged through the town.

Maria sat up quietly, hardly turned toward him, stopped moving and looked at him.

“It’s crazy, but I saw Rodrigo Paestra. He is there on the roof.”

Pierre was asleep. He had just fallen asleep, as suddenly as a child. Maria remembered that it had always been like that.

He was sleeping. Her need to be sure was funny. Hadn’t she been sure?

She sat up a little more. He didn’t move. She got up completely, brushed against his body, freed, lonely, abandoned in its sleep.

When Maria reached the balcony, she looked at the time she carried with her on her wrist, her time. It was half past midnight. In about three hours, at this time of year, it would be dawn. Rodrigo Paestra, the same statue of death she had seen earlier, was waiting for this dawn, and to be killed.

Four

T
HE SKY HAD RISEN
above the town, but in the distance, it was still flush with the wheat fields. But this was the end. The lightning was weaker. And the rumbling of the thunder was weaker. In two and a half hours it would be dawn whatever the weather. A bad, veiled dawn, a bad dawn for Rodrigo Paestra. Now everyone was asleep in the hotel and in the town, except Maria, and Rodrigo Paestra.

The police whistles had stopped. They were keeping watch around the town, guarding all exits, waiting for the bright daylight when they would catch Rodrigo Paestra. In two and a half hours.

Perhaps Maria would fall asleep. Her desire to drink was so strong. Perhaps it was too much for her to wait for dawn. The time of night had arrived when, already, each hour pushed you into the weariness of the next, unavoidable day. The mere anticipation of its coming weighs down on you. During this next day, their love would grow still stronger. Wait.

Maria stayed on the balcony, even when a new shower split the sky again. The shower was light, and warm.

The pointed roof opposite her was washed by the rain. On top of it, around a square chimney, where the two sides of the roof met, was this thing whose shape had remained identical to what Maria had seen at ten-thirty, in a flash of lightning. The thing was wrapped in darkness. The rain fell on it just as it fell on the roof. Then it stopped. And the shape was there. It fitted the shape of the chimney so perfectly that, if you looked at it long enough, you might doubt it was human. Perhaps it was cement, propping up the chimney, darkened over the years. And yet at the same time, whenever lightning lit up the roof, it was the shape of a man.

“What weather,” Maria said. She had spoken as if she had said it to Pierre. Then she waited.

The shape remained identical. One chance in a lifetime that it was a man. Silent, tired policemen walked by in the street, their boots splashing. Then they were gone.

This time Maria called.

“Rodrigo Paestra.”

The possibility that he might answer, move, abandon this inhuman position was enough to make her imagination leap with joy.

“Hey,” Maria called out. She gestured toward the roof.

Nothing moved. Little by little Maria woke up. She still felt like drinking. She remembered that there was a bottle of brandy in the car. A while ago, when she mentioned it to Pierre, this desire to drink was slight, hardly noticeable, but now it had become violent. She looked into the corridor, and beyond, to see if some light in the dining room would offer her hopes of getting a drink. None. If she asked Pierre, he would do it. Tonight, he would do it, he would go and wake up one of the waiters. But she wasn’t going to do it, she wasn’t going to wake up Pierre. “You know, Maria, I love you.” He was sleeping near Claire ever since she left the corridor. So let him sleep near Claire. Let him sleep, let him sleep. If this was Rodrigo Paestra, this night in particular, what luck for Maria. What relief from boredom. This time it was because of Claire.

“Hey there,” Maria shouted again.

Wait. Why should this shape be a man? Once in a lifetime it was possible that this would be he, a man. But it was possible. Why not then accept this possibility?

“Hey,” Maria shouted again.

Once more the slow, dull sound of the police moving closer toward dawn. Maria was silent. Could it be Rodrigo Paestra? It was within the realm of possibility that it was he. As long as she was Maria. It was in the realm of possibility that he should have happened on her, Maria, the night. Wasn’t the proof right there in front of her? The proof was urgent. Maria had just invented that this was Rodrigo Paestra. No one else knew it but this woman who was eleven yards away from him, away from this man wanted by the police, the storm murderer, this treasure, this monument of suffering.

Again the rain fell softly on him. And on everything else too, the other roofs, the wheat, the streets. The shape hadn’t moved. It was waiting to be caught, death for the dawn of the coming day. At dawn,
little by little, the roofs would be lit. When the storm would have blown over the wheat fields, dawn would be pale red.

“Rodrigo Paestra, Rodrigo Paestra,” Maria called.

Did he want to die? Again the police. Respectful of the people’s sleep, they made their rounds without speaking, without calling, sure of themselves. They turned into the swampy streets, on the right, and their footsteps disappeared without echoes. Maria called a bit louder.

“Answer, Rodrigo Paestra. Answer me.”

She was against the iron railing of the balcony. The railing beat. It was Maria’s heart. He didn’t answer. Hope was getting thinner, became minute, disappeared. She would know at dawn if it was he. But then it would be too late.

“I beg you, Rodrigo Paestra, answer me.”

It wasn’t he? Nothing was sure. Except that Maria wanted it.

Someone coughed in the corridor. Moved. Pierre. Yes, Pierre.

Within the next two days, Pierre and Claire would come together. They would devote themselves to this purpose. They would have to find where. What would follow was still unknown, unpredictable, an abyss of time. A length of time not yet known to them, nor to Maria, which was already spreading beyond the storm. Madrid would be its beginning. Tomorrow.

What words should she use? What words?

“Rodrigo Paestra, trust me.”

It was already one in the morning. In two hours Rodrigo Paestra would be trapped like a rat if nothing happened until dawn but the passage of time.

Maria leaning over the balcony was looking at the man. Above him the sky was clear. The rain had to stop now, it had to. It seemed there was some blue, and moons, appearing in the light, endless sky. Around the chimney, nothing, nothing moved. The rain that had already fallen, flowed down, murmuring, from the shape as well as from the roofs. Fire, as well, could burn it. He wasn’t going to surrender at dawn. It was certain that he was waiting to be crushed right there by the city’s licensed snipers.

Maria, her body bent over the balcony, started to sing. Very softly. A tune from that summer, that he should know, that he should have danced to with his wife on Saturday nights.

Maria stopped singing. She waited. Yes, the sky had cleared. The storm had moved away. Dawn would be beautiful. Pale red. Rodrigo
Paestra didn’t want to live. The song had brought no change to his shape. To this shape that had become less and less identifiable with anything but him. A sharp, without sharp angles, long and supple enough to be human, with this sudden roundness on top, the small surface of the head surging from the mass of the body. A man.