The Faint-hearted Bolshevik (8 page)

I had a moment of doubt. It was wrong. What I was doing was truly wrong. My sister was the yardstick who measured all I did and this would be way off scale. Rosana was making fun of my sister, and I was her accomplice, maybe even the instigator. Rosana had nothing to do with my sister, but, whether I liked it or not, I did. I hesitated. Then she, Rosana, made the decision for me. She went and closed the door, then took her blouse off completely, revealing her slim girl’s torso in all its glory. My sister was a sad, repressed creature. Rosana was happy and carefree. I had only a single reservation: “Tell me that you want this because of me, not to get back at my sister.”

Rosana burst out laughing. As she took off her skirt she reassured me, “You’re so funny. I don’t give a damn about your sister.”

I’m more or less a gentleman and nobody should expect a detailed account of what took place between me and Rosana in that room. She was compliant and tireless and I was as unscrupulous as the situation demanded. I will only describe the last thing I saw before I woke up: my sister was standing in the doorway with a horrified expression on her face; Rosana greeted her and then carried on shamelessly, the look of callous, childish joy never once leaving her face. And I, the man, saw that everything was good.

At eleven a.m. on the dot, my old body, struggling to recover from alcoholic over-indulgence and a dream about Rosana, was sitting on the bench we had agreed on the day before. Memories of the elusive Rosana I had dealt with in the evening and the shady lady who had unexpectedly made me so happy during the night swirled around in my mind. Surrounded by old people, mothers, children and small dogs, I played at betting with myself which of the two Rosanas would turn up that morning, if either of them turned up at all. A bookmaker would never have risked his money on anyone turning up for my date, and if there was some pressing reason for him to take the bet, he would never have expected a Rosana any different from the day before. In short, a bookmaker would have fulfilled his fate, which is not to win, just as it is not a doctor’s fate to cure anyone. The fate of the bookmaker is that one who doesn’t know better will get rich at his expense while he earns little more than a modest return. The doctor’s fate is for his science to succumb when faced with one of the meticulous agents of death. And mine, though it has nothing to do with that of bookmakers or doctors, was an unforeseeably wicked Rosana.

However, when quarter past eleven came around, and my electronic slave of a wristwatch informed me of it with one of its stupid bleeps, I was still as single as the malt whisky to which I owed the pounding in my temples. The only thing a man can give, at least those of us who don’t have any outsize moral or physical attributes compared to others, is his word, and the only thing I could do when my watch told me the time was to get up and walk away with dignity. So this is what I did. I straightened my tie (not the one Rosana had praised the day before, but more or less similar in style) and I turned my steps towards one of the park exits.

She let me walk fifty or sixty feet. All of a sudden she appeared from behind a tree.

“Hi there, cop.”

I stopped to admire her. She had chosen a daring sporty outfit for the occasion, knee length stretch pants and a spaghetti strap tank top glued to every part of her body above her waist, her shoulders almost intolerably bare. She had her hair tied up in a kind of bun, which made her look slightly older.

“I was just leaving,” I said.

“So soon? You didn’t even wait an extra minute. We women always arrive late.”

“I don’t wait for women. My religion doesn’t allow me to. So I’m off,” I started walking again and stopped midway, “unless you beg me to stay, of course.”

Rosana gave me a sideways glance.

“Unless I beg you? On your way then, I can see what your weak spot is.”

“What is it then?”

“It’s easy to spot your weak spot,” she joked, “It’s the same as those who hang around the school railings to look at girls’ panties.”

“If that’s what you think, then let’s call it a day, Rosana. You’re very cute but you don’t know when the wind is blowing your way. I couldn’t care less about underwear.”

Then I started to walk with every intention of not stopping until I received some definite sign from her that she was willing to play the game. It was the moment of truth for the punter and that wicked little girl put an end to any uncertainty with a sole hammer blow.

“Good,” she shouted, “I’m not wearing any.”

“What?”

“Panties. I’m not wearing any panties.” As I made my way back she explained, “You can see everything through these leggings. There’s nothing uglier than going round showing the world that you’re being wedgied by your underwear.”

I must confess that, like any other dirty swine, my eyes went immediately to check the most obvious part of Rosana’s anatomy, to see if she was telling the truth. And she was, in an obvious and disturbing way.

“Watch it, cop. That’s pushing it a bit,” she warned, folding her hands in front of her. There’s no need for me to explain my confusion. It was so great that Rosana must have felt obliged to help me out.

“It’s a deal” she said, coming closer.

“What’s a deal?”

“I beg you. Please don’t go. So come and sit with me.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to keep the deal,” I tried to back out. “I think you’re getting mixed up in all this. You must be too young. How old are you?”

Rosana turned flirty as she answered, “Right now I’m fifteen. Sixteen in January. Are you old enough to be my father?”

“No. I wasn’t socializing with women when you were born. I only loved them.”

“The way you talk is really funny.”

“I’m a very funny cop. That’s why I work with juvenile delinquents.”

“Have you caught Borja yet?”

“I’m not after Borja. I’m interested in his pusher. Borja is a hopeless moron, with a father who chairs the Alumni Association and gives him fifteen thousand pesetas pocket money every Saturday. If we put all the morons like him, or his father, in jail, we’d run out of prisons.”

Rosana walked back towards a bench and sat down. I didn’t move.

“Are you really sure you don’t want to come and sit with me?” she invited me. “Everyone wants to sit with me, if I let them. I’m very popular.”

“I don’t doubt it at all. You’re first in your class and the prettiest girl in school. If you had a ton of pimples and your ass was so big you couldn’t get your leggings on you’d be less popular, even if you were top of the class. But it’s not such a bad thing that you take advantage of it. No-one would feel sorry for you if you didn’t take advantage of it.”

“Come here,” she insisted, patting the bench with her lily white hand.

“I shouldn’t. You were late. If I sit down you’ll think it doesn’t matter whether or not you comply with my conditions.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“You promise. And what makes you think that’s good enough for me? I’ve lied a thousand times when I’ve made promises.”

Her full lips, ever so slightly redder than normal, quirked up in a triumphant crescent moon.

“I’ve been here since ten to eleven. Behind that tree. I’m not lying. I saw you arrive at eleven o’clock exactly and set the alarm on your watch.”

“Alright,” I agreed. “You like to set traps for me. You have a twisted mind. Just the type of girl I like.”

I sat down next to her and as I was taking my seat I had a very foolish, very sentimental idea. In the course of my love life, in spite of what I expected when I was twenty and all the girls used to laugh at me, I’ve managed to enjoy the favors of some really quite not so bad looking women. But I never had the sensation of fulfilling a desire, that is that the little thing sitting quiet and docile at one’s side is the object of desire you’ve been looking for and has evaded you a thousand times. The most I got to experience was a feeling that I’d robbed someone of their desire, like when I conquered Sabine, a magnificent German girl the guy who had been my best friend until that day had been lusting after. This can serve as a substitute to temporarily shore up your vanity. But in the long run, it’s completely useless. Well anyway, when I saw myself sitting there, part of a duo whose other half consisted of Rosana, who was welcoming me with her mischievous sweetness, I realized that I was fulfilling my own desire for the first time ever, a true and eternal one. I already know it sounds tremendous bullshit. I even had goose pimples.

Rosana had turned thoughtful.

“I get five thousand pesetas pocket money on Saturdays,” she suddenly confessed. “Do you think my dad’s an idiot too?”

Perhaps because I was feeling vulnerable and tender, I decided to be brutal, forgetting that the girl next to me was not yet sweet sixteen.

“Of course he is. There are women who have to give some stinking drunk a blow job to earn five thousand pesetas. This way you’ll never know the value of things.”

Rosana’s eyes shone.

“Was your father poor?”

“My father
is
poor, if by that you mean someone who has to work and then pay taxes on every last fucking peseta he earns. That’s what I think, anyway.”

“So you’re a socialist.”

“Who told you that?”

“My father says that poor people are socialists because socialists promise them that they’re going to take everything from those of us who aren’t poor.”

“Your father is really very confused.”

“What are you then?”

“I’m a Bolshevik,” I improvised.

“And what do Bolsheviks want?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Rosana frowned.

“Try me. I’m not stupid. And I studied twentieth century history in eighth grade.”

“We Bolsheviks go back to the nineteenth century, not the twentieth. We want to shoot people like your father and then shoot poor people so they realize that we’re all crooks and no-one is worth saving.”

“You’re kidding. You’re laughing at me.”

“Of course I am. I’m a nobody, and I’ll stop being whatever I am if you ask me to.”

“You’re nuts, cop.”

“Not at all. I’ve got my opinion about what the shit going round in people’s heads is worth. Not a single drop of your tears, gorgeous.”

She was confused, and I was diving into her clear blue gaze with more enthusiasm than a thirty-something year-old guy ought to show towards a fifteen year-old girl on a public park bench. She avoided my eyes and wrapped her arms around one of her legs. This was not a trivial detail. For those legs I would have been capable of letting my Argentine dentist lecture me, putting my glass rubbish in the correct recycling bin, or even wearing a cellphone clipped to my waistband.

“Is that a compliment?” she asked.

“I don’t pay compliments. I declare my love or I get the hell out.”

For a moment it seemed like she was blushing, but it must have been a mirage. She untied her hair and observed me, her chin resting on her delicate fist.

“Today’s tie isn’t as nice as yesterday’s.”

“I’ll take it off if it bothers you.”

“Okay.”

I unknotted my tie, folded it and put it in the inside pocket of my jacket.

“Better now?”

“Yes. You’re not as old as I thought. You don’t have wrinkles round your neck.”

“I don’t have wrinkles anywhere. But I do have a few gray hairs.”

“They don’t really show.”

“I don’t mind if they show. The two most ridiculous things a man can do is use hair growth restorer and dye his gray hairs. Does your father dye his?”

“My father’s as bald as an egg.”

“Of course, I should have guessed. And what does your father do?”

“He’s an architect.”

“What about your mother?”

“My mother doesn’t do anything. She plays the piano and speaks French. I think that’s all she knows how to do.”

“Your mother has time to get bored, Rosana. You should always respect someone with time to get bored. That’s how people grow wise.”

Rosana shook her head.

“Not my mother. Sometimes not even the maid takes her seriously.”

“I’m beginning to like your mother. I get on better with unlucky people.”

“I’m lucky.”

“You’re something else. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Five. They’re all older than me, married with kids and all that. Except for Sonsoles. She’s the eldest, but she’s single. My brother Pablo says she’s been left on the shelf. She gets angry when he says that.”

There was a cruel indifference towards Sonsoles in Rosana’s tone of voice. I did some digging. “Do you get on well with your sister?”

“With Sonsoles? She’s too much of a smart aleck to get along with anyone. She never does anything wrong and she thinks everyone around her are idiots. By all accounts she’s forever rubbing her colleagues at the Ministry up the wrong way. She does it to my mother too, and even my father.”

“What about you?”

Rosana put the leg she had tucked up on the bench back down and stretched both legs out in front of her. Comparing them with Sonsoles’ scrawny sticks it was hard to believe they were related. “Sonsoles knows I’m not an idiot,” she replied maliciously.

“For any specific reason?”

“Sisters have secrets … ”

“I won’t ever tell her. I don’t know her and I don’t intend to.”

She stared at me, as if giving me an X-ray.

“I’ll keep your secret,” I promised.

“It was just after I turned thirteen. At that time Sonsoles had a suitor. A guy with a belly and a moustache. I’m glad you don’t have a belly or a moustache. I thought that all policemen had moustaches.”

“Those are the Guardia Civil. Were.”

“Well this guy was a lawyer or something like that, but he had one anyway. They both came to our summer house in Llanes. One day I was in my room changing after a trip to the beach when I saw him in the garden, spying on me. I’d already stripped off and he’d already seen me, so I took my time. I got dressed as if nothing was wrong and went downstairs to eat. At dinner the guy was so laid back, calling Sonsoles
darling
. I ate the starter and main course without saying a word. When they brought dessert I snapped at my sister that another summer she should bring a boyfriend who wouldn’t go behind her back. At first Sonsoles didn’t understand, then she told me to shut up. But I said that Mr. Moustache liked younger girls. Then Sonsoles got really mad and my father sent me out of the room, but the guy had already turned bright red and on my way out I took the chance to advise him that next time he wanted to watch me undressing he should either hide himself better or ask my permission. The lawyer left first thing next morning and my sister hated me, but she never again thought I was an idiot.”

From what she’d told me I could imagine everything: the lawyer drenched in sweat in the undergrowth, his hairy legs bowed under the weight of his hideous paunch; Rosana slowly getting dressed and pretending not to notice; Sonsoles’ fussiness at first and then being shown up by her not-so-charming prince’s sticky onanism.

The child her parents had unfortunately given her as a sister had turned out to be her worst enemy, a walking humiliation which served to pay for all her sins. It was a perfect twist of fate: to make her live under the same roof with a child who had exactly what she lacked, the ability to charm others. I imagined all her efforts to hide how much she hated her, going to pick her up from school, taking her shopping, telling her secrets and sharing confidences. For the first time I felt sorry for her, sorry for that bitch Sonsoles.