Lime's Photograph (11 page)

“The Danish woman has asked after you,” she said at one point.

“Who?”

“I can’t remember her name.”

“Oh, her,” I said.

“She asked about … yes. You know.”

“I’ve got other things to think about right now,” I said, sounding more irritated than I actually felt. Amelia shouldn’t have borne the brunt, in any case.

“Is there anything you want me to do?” she asked.

“Talk with your father. I’m fine. See you before long. Kiss the little one.”

“I’ve sent her off to school. I thought it was best. I said you were away on one of your trips.”

“You could just have told the truth. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“OK.”

There was a short silence.

“Pedro,” she said.

“Yes, my darling.”

“I understand. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Come home soon.”

“I shall. Don’t you worry. Kiss the little one!”

“Will do.”

“
Adiós
,” I said, and pressed the button, breaking the connection.

Time was nearly up, so I rang Gloria’s direct number. Oscar would be in a state; Gloria would take it calmly. Oscar was in Gloria’s office. I could hear him muttering and banging around in the background as I told Gloria what had happened.

“We’ve got three or four lawyers working to get you out,” she said in her familiar and pleasant voice. “But they’re using the anti-terrorism legislation, and so are of the opinion that they aren’t obliged to say anything. We’ve gone to court to challenge your detention under that legislation in the first place. It’s not looking good, Peter.”

“What does Oscar say about it?”

“Oscar is pacing up and down talking about fascism and is of no use to anyone. He’s listening now.”

“Hello, Peter. Keep your chin up!” I heard him shout.

I explained to Gloria, and an interjecting Oscar, about the offer from the remote powers that be, and I remembered to say that the press had to be kept out of it. Oscar protested in the background and talked about freedom of speech and not giving in to force, but that’s easy said when you’re not in a cell and won’t feel the repercussions, while Gloria was, of course, thinking practically.

“We don’t need that kind of harassment. It would damage the business in the long run and we’ve got to get you out now. I can’t bear
the thought of you rotting away in some cell. It makes me so damned furious. Do shut up, Oscar! We’re based in Spain and don’t need the antagonism of the authorities here. Let’s get Peter out. What shall I do, Peter?”

I gave her the telephone number of the Minister’s lackey, which he had given to me as he left the cell the night before, and asked her to hand over the photographs and negatives to him.

“What about a guarantee?” said Gloria.

“You don’t have to bother about that,” I said.

“OK, Peter. Anything else?”

“How’s Amelia?”

“OK. She’s not easily thrown. But of course it’s hard. You’ve got yourself a treasure there, Peter, but then I suppose you know that.”

“OK. Thanks.”

“Take care of yourself,
carino
. I haven’t given up on getting you out today.”

“That would be nice.”

The line went dead. They must have had some central way of doing that. It was a cordless phone which they could “hang up” somewhere else. A little while later, the new warder came to fetch the phone, and I watched with mixed feelings as he took away my lifeline. I had made contact. There was a world outside. There were friends working to get me out.

It was a boring day, but actually rather relaxing and peaceful as well. Perhaps because it was only a question of time before I was free again. Amelia and Maria Luisa knew that I hadn’t come to any harm. Everything had been put in motion and now the cogs were turning calmly and steadily and predictably. It was like waiting for the quarry during an assignment. You had to dig deep inside yourself and make time stand still.

I read the newspapers, slept a bit, smoked cigarettes, exercised in the
yard for half an hour and ate again. Chicken soup, this time, followed by a grilled trout,
trucha a la Navarra
. I asked for some coffee and was given it, and lay on my back gazing at the ceiling and actually can’t remember how the evening passed. I drank water, read the newspapers again, listened to the radio – they never brought the television – and thought about my family. I watched scenes played out on my inner cinema. Good scenes with Amelia, Maria Luisa and me in the house in the mountains above San Sebastián. Maybe you would expect a day like that to be spent reflecting on life or other profound issues. But that kind of contemplation doesn’t just emerge because you’ve got time. Time simply existed and it passed slowly and laboriously, but a day only has so many seconds. I did a sequence of push-ups and sit-ups and lay down on my back and waited for sleep which, as usual, was a long time coming.

But at last I fell asleep, with a more or less easy mind, not knowing that during these very same hours my world was being completely smashed. That my journey to hell had, without my knowledge, already begun.

I had a nasty dream just before they woke me up. I was on a camping trip, as if I was a boy scout again, but the camp had been made in a strange, surreal landscape with artificial mountains, fake snow and a delicately burnished, ultra-blue light which could have been created by the Hollywood dream factory or computer generated. It was darker out on the horizon, as if thunderclouds were gathering. The camp fire was a gas-burning contraption in the middle of an open cave with slimy, grey walls. I was bent over a pot which was bubbling like a hot spring in Iceland. In the distance a bird was screeching, over and over again. It sounded like a mixture of a woman’s desperate laughter and a death rattle. Oscar was there. He stood with his back to me, wearing one of his impeccable suits. He was taller than usual and was holding a book. It had a black cloth binding. He was wearing a white shirt with a lilac tie. Gloria was standing next to him. She had turned into a redhead. At first she was wearing a long kaftan, like the ones women used to wear in my youth, but suddenly she was naked, just her pubic area covered with a red square like the ones newspapers use on moral grounds. Oscar held out the book to her and she reached out to take it, but her hands were gnarled and aged, with long nails which had grown to different lengths. Oscar said, “Take the book of accounts. Everything has been entered and audited.”

Gloria thought better of it and didn’t want to accept the heavy black book. “I asked for the hour of reckoning, not the book of reckoning,” she said.

I wanted to turn to them and say that Oscar had got hold of the right book, but I knew I had to stir the bubbling pot and I didn’t dare move my head, but I saw it all anyway. I was very, very frightened. I was also full of regret because I didn’t dare tell Oscar that he had found the right book.

I struggled to wake up, because in the dream an inner voice told me that my own face would soon appear in the diabolical devil’s brew and it would be covered with running sores. The whole scene was bathed in opalescent, dark lilac light speckled with silvery, virulent streaks.

I woke with a start.

The fat warder was standing in the doorway. He had a peculiar expression on his face. I was drenched with sweat, my heart was hammering and it felt as if electric currents were running through my head as I struggled to wake up and send my subconscious packing. I sat up and swung my legs out so quickly that I became dizzy and everything went black for a moment.

“I’m sorry, señor Lime, if I startled you,” said the fat warder. It was the first time I had heard him speak. His voice didn’t go with his body at all. I had expected such a big man to hold a deep guttural bass with the Madrileños’ hard consonants, but he had a thin, light voice and from his accent I guessed that he came from Badajoz in Extremadura. I knew the town. One summer I had photographed the storks sitting in their nests on the old, parched, tiled roofs, just like their ancestors had sat there as the conquistadors had set forth to murder, rape and plunder the new world. The image conjured up by his mellow dialect, and the stately white birds on the roof ridges, calmed me and my heart stopped racing.

“That’s all right,” I said, rubbing my eyes and out of habit gathering
my hair into its ponytail.

“May I kindly request señor Lime to come with me?” he said.

His courtesy made me suspicious.

“What’s the time?”

“A little after seven o’clock.”

“So you’re releasing me now? The judge is up early.”

“If you would just please come with me, señor Lime” he said.

“What for? Where?”

“Señor Lime. Please. Just come with me. A couple of friends are waiting. Nothing will happen to you. Of that I can assure you.”

There was a kind of desperation and at the same time sincerity in his fat face, so I believed him.

“Give me a minute alone,” I said pleasantly.

He went out of the cell, but left the door ajar. I had a pee, splashed water on my face and put an elastic band around my ponytail before pulling on my jeans and putting my shirt on over my t-shirt. I was still a bit dazed, as you feel when you’ve had a stupid dream and have been woken up before it reaches a resolution or you’ve fallen back into a dreamless sleep.

We trudged along the corridor. It was still quiet in my cell block, but as soon as we started to climb the stairs I heard the intoxicating strains of Madrid’s morning symphony. My spirits rose at the thought that I would soon be seeing my wife and child. We reached a wide corridor. It was bustling. That’s the word that struck me, because there were several people walking this way and that. I had been alone for so long that seeing several people at once had an overwhelming effect. The sound of their hurrying feet could be heard above the distant turbulence of Madrid’s heavy morning traffic, as pleasantly recognisable as one’s own face in the mirror. Some nodded, others looked away. I hadn’t been isolated for all that long, but it felt like an eternity. I realised what a terrible punishment solitary confinement is, I realised why people who endure weeks
and months of it finally crack. The human being is a social animal.

We went into a big office. The judge was sitting behind a desk. Gloria and Oscar were sitting opposite him. They looked as if they had encountered Death. Gloria was red-eyed. It was years since I had seen her like that. Without her usual meticulously made-up face, she suddenly looked older. Her make-up looked as though it had been put on in a hurry. But it was more her expression. It seemed drained of the energy which her beautiful, mature face always radiated. Oscar appeared to be in a stony trance, but still agitated with his usual pent-up energy.

“About time too,” I said with cheerful irony. That was our usual tone. “I thought you were going to let me rot in here for ever.”

“Sit down, Peter,” said Oscar stiffly.

Apprehension made the bile rise in my throat.

“Has something happened to Amelia?” I said.

“Just sit down, Peter!” Oscar repeated.

Gloria came over to me and took my hand and pulled me down onto a leather sofa against the wall. There were two leather chairs to match in front of the examining magistrate’s desk. It was a very masculine, but also heavy room which said that rigour and order prevailed here, and possibly justice. There was a transparent plastic bag on the desk, with my things in it: wallet, keys, Leica, mobile phone, lighter, cigarettes.

“What’s happened to Amelia and Maria Luisa?” I was shouting now. I don’t know why I was so certain. I just knew. But the shock still hit me with a vicious intensity when Gloria, quietly and with tears in her voice, uttered the worst words I have ever heard in my life.

“Amelia and Maria Luisa are no longer with us, Peter. They are dead, Peter. They died in a fire last night. It’s so damned unjust and so damned wrong and so damned dreadful.”

Then she burst into tears and even though I vomited down her back
she kept on hugging me and holding me in her arms.

Time evaporated. I don’t know how long I was out, but there’s a hole in my memory like the empty nothingness of the universe. They told me later that I hadn’t fainted, but vanished behind my own eyes as if the light had been switched off and, like a robot, had ground to a halt. I don’t know if it was an unpleasant experience because I can’t remember anything about it. Just darkness and silence. It lasted ten minutes. Ten minutes as if in a deep sleep. They were afraid that I would never return to the living, but linger among the living dead. They feared that I was turning into a zombie before their very eyes. In a way that’s probably what I really wanted, but we cling to life. I look back upon the episode as my body’s back-up. Like a computer, when the programme crashed, it closed itself down in order to save fragments from the wreckage and protect the vital parts. I died a little, is how I think of it.

When I came back to unmerciful reality, I was sitting on the sofa with a glass of water in my hand. I swallowed the contents in one gulp. It was cold, but my mouth and my throat remained dry. They stood round me like a tableau of wax figures, set rigid in time, frozen in the moment of eternity. Gloria looked completely depraved. Like a woman who had been startled by her husband while indulging in foreplay with her lover. She was half-naked to the waist, wearing only her black bra and her jacket. I could smell myself and my vomit that was lying like a foul shadow on the floor. Someone must have wiped it up. Gloria’s blouse had been stuffed into a plastic bag.

I was given more water.

“Are you OK?” Oscar asked.

“For heaven’s sake, Oscar!” Gloria said.

“No. I’m not OK, Oscar. But I’d like to know what’s going on,” I said.

My voice was unnaturally composed. It was as if I was standing outside my own body, listening to myself speak.

The judge cleared his throat. He sat stoutly with an aloof expression on his face. He had small pig’s eyes.

“Señor Lime,” he said, and nudged a piece of paper in front of him as if it was unclean, as if it had been used to wipe up my vomit. The smell surrounding me and inside me was like the manure heap on my uncle’s farm when I was a boy. I could feel my face going red then pale then red again, but the judge didn’t bat an eyelid. Gloria sat down beside me and took my hand while the judge intoned: