The Wind From the East (10 page)

Authors: Almudena Grandes

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Contemporary Women

BOOK: The Wind From the East

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“Yes.” Damián looked even more frightened now than when he first arrived, and he nodded with a meekness Juan hadn’t seen since their school days. But all Juan’s compassion was reserved for himself.

While he was telling his colleagues what had happened, while he was changing as quickly as he could, while he drank a coffee before it had even cooled or the sugar dissolved, while he pressed down on the accelerator as his car headed up the ramp of the underground car park, Juan Olmedo tried to replace the images of all the corpses he had ever witnessed with the memory of all the victims who had managed to survive before his very eyes. He tried to remember every hospital bed, every recovery exercise, every furtive tear, every conscious smile, every vase of flowers, as the only things capable of dislodging all the other images of bodies without legs, arms, eyes, a head, without any real body at all, all the deaths he’d seen pronounced or had to pronounce himself. He’d never experienced this kind of pressure before, or felt so detached from himself. Nor could he remember ever having been as afraid as he was then. He wanted to scream, pound his fists on the dashboard and tear at his face; but he could do nothing except drive as fast, and prudently, as he could, and with all the hope he could muster.

“You don’t think she’s dead, do you?” asked Damián, as if he could read Juan’s mind, as they turned onto the La Coruña road.“They would have told me, wouldn’t they, if she was dead?”

Juan kept staring straight ahead as he answered.“I don’t know.”

But he did know. He was fully familiar with the system that handled every car accident—he’d spent the last fifteen years being part of it. He knew that until a doctor had certified the death of a victim, the court wasn’t contacted, and until the judge on duty turned up and authorized the removal of the bodies, the relatives of the victims couldn’t be informed. He knew that nobody said their official farewell to life until several strangers had confirmed that he or she was definitely dead, and that the first stretch of the Galapagar road came under the jurisdiction of the courts of Plaza de Castilla. He knew that in the municipal district of Madrid, Friday and Saturday nights were lethal, and that at weekends the courts were as overworked as the emergency departments. He knew that the judge often arrived late, and that the relatives almost always got there before he did. He knew all this, but he said nothing because he remembered how many times he himself had wished Charo dead, gone, vanished, transported to the other side of the universe. He remembered all the sleepless nights he’d spent imagining her death, all the glasses he’d raised to toast her imaginary funeral, all the times the phone had rung, torturing him over the years, all the restaurant tables set for two where he’d ended up eating alone, all the lives he’d given up, all the girlfriends he’d left, all the opportunities he’d turned down just so that he could go on experiencing the glorious torment of waiting for the phone to ring, of sitting alone at restaurant tables, of sleepless nights, and of the tanned body of the love of his life.You can’t resign from hell, Juan Olmedo told himself while there was still time, because hell never stops. Hell has legs, two long legs that leave their taut, sinuous, luxuriant imprint on the retinas of the condemned, and they can always outrun even the fastest unwary wretch.You can’t say no, because hell has no ears for the word no; Juan knew this better than anyone because he’d spent half his life uttering it in vain. “Surely I wouldn’t free myself of you so easily,” Juan Olmedo said to himself. It would be too simple, too casual, too appalling. “It can’t be true, it can’t be,” he repeated to himself, because there was still time. And somehow an image slipped behind his eyes, like a transparency: a hospital room, with a single bed near the window, the sun shining in, and against the dazzling white sheets a Charo who was slimmer, very tired and pale, with untidy hair and burning eyes, her head to one side, lightly resting her cheek against the hand of a man dressed in green standing beside the bed, and it was him, Dr. Olmedo, and he’d arranged for his sister-in-law to be transferred to his floor so that he could personally supervise her recovery, and at last he’d managed to get her all to himself, from the time he took her breakfast in the morning until he said good night.“I’ll heal you,” he thought,“I’ll take care of you, I’ll look after you,” and he savored every syllable of those three lines because there was still time.“I’ll repair every bone in your body, I’ll make sure you get to sleep each night, I’ll see to it that you don’t feel even a hint of pain, and we’ll talk,” he added, still to himself, feeling more and more euphoric, “we’ll talk about the things we always talk about, but you’ll have experienced death close up and life will be more dear to you, and I’ll take care of Damián, I’ll explain everything to him, we’ll leave together, we’ll go far away.” He managed to lose himself so abruptly, so suddenly, so desperately in this searing fantasy, that he almost took the wrong turn. As he rounded the next bend, Juan saw the lights of the ambulance in the background, parked in the middle of the road. Before he got out of the car, he searched for Charo but he couldn’t see her.

“Damián! Damián!”

Juan Olmedo heard someone shout his brother’s name, and recognized the voice of Nicanor Martos, an inspector in the National Police force, and his brother’s best friend. He looked for him, but couldn’t see him amongst the dozen or so men and women, some in uniform, clustered around the ambulance, the crane, and the van carrying officials—two police cars with their lights flashing and several other cars parked haphazardly completed the scene. As he made his way through the crowd, Juan saw a man’s shoe lying on the ground on its side, a very clean and almost new shoe, the leather sole barely marked. In that instant, Juan knew that Charo was dead. He felt overwhelmed by a sudden tide of nausea, as if all the fluid in his healthy, living body was smashing against the walls of his skull, pounding his eyes, ears, temples, and nose in increasingly violent, painful waves. His legs felt hollow, his arms numb, his chest empty, while his head seemed to swell like a sponge, useless, saturated. Images swam before his eyes as if through a blurred, liquid veil, and his ears were unable to process the sounds because of the monstrous waves crashing together repeatedly in the center of his forehead.Through this blurred tableau, he finally caught sight of Nicanor, coming towards him with one arm raised, frozen in warning. He turned his head out of some vague instinct, and saw two shapes covered in thick brownish-grey blankets, lying beside the white line at the edge of the road.

“Damián!”

Juan thought Nicanor was shouting to him, but Nicanor repeated the name one more time and Juan realized that his brother was still beside him and that his own legs were trembling, close to collapse.

“Don’t come any closer, Damián. She’s dead.”

The policeman, as accustomed as any doctor to breaking bad news, was a cold-blooded creature. Juan knew this, for he knew him well. Nicanor Martos, who had chosen the same career as his father and grandfather, did not have a good reputation in Estrecho when the Olmedos moved there in the mid-seventies. For the first few days, as Juan was wandering about trying to get his bearings in the new district, he saw Nicanor a few times, always on his own, walking up and down the streets in a green loden coat and expensive shoes that seemed incongruous with his greasy, acne-covered face. In those days, he was already tall and rather fat, and on his lapel he always wore the right-wing Falangist Party badge. He made it clear that he wasn’t simply looking at people, he was watching them. But then he met Damián and the rest of the world receded. He became the younger Olmedo’s shadow: he grew his hair, began wearing black boots with a flamenco heel, and bought a tight denim jacket to match his jeans, as was the fashion in Villaverde at that time. From then on they were inseparable. Damián was the only friend Nicanor had ever had, and was still the only person who really mattered to him. Perhaps twenty years had not been long enough to repay in full the debt of gratitude and admiration that Nicanor felt he owed Damián.Although he had viewed the dead bodies of the victims with indifference, his eyes were clouded as he hugged Damián.

“It’s her. She’s dead,” he said again, to make sure that Damián understood. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Juan closed his eyes but then he felt something strike his shoulder—it was his brother staggering, swaying from side to side. Nicanor grabbed hold of him and helped him over to one of the police cars, so that he could lean against it. Juan, who had grown used to holding himself upright, to controlling every syllable, every silence, in a decade of furtive love, stood motionless. His mouth was dry, his throat suddenly raw, and he realized he felt dizzy too. He made his way over to Damián and Nicanor.

“What happened?” Damián was slurring his words as if he were drunk, his features frozen and his eyes unfocused, until he turned to look at his friend, who couldn’t begin to find a way to answer him.

“Tell me what happened,” Damián insisted.“I want to know.”

“It must have taken place about five thirty this morning.” Nicanor glanced at his notebook, where he’d entered the cold, cruel data. “It seems the driver must have been blind drunk, at the very least.The doctor who examined him told the police he’d probably taken something else too, maybe coke or ecstasy, who knows. He was heading away from Madrid at over 180 kilometers an hour. He came off the road, crashed through the barrier and slammed the Audi into the cliff face. Neither of them was wearing a seat belt.The police had to use a special crane to pry the car away from the rock—it was wedged so tightly into a fissure that they weren’t able to pull it out using the normal hooks and chains. Both of the passengers were killed instantly. Charo’s airbag inflated but a piece of the car’s bodywork, or maybe it was the barrier, sliced through her femoral artery. His airbag didn’t even inflate, the collision must have been too violent.The emergency services had a difficult job getting the bodies out and they’re in a pretty bad state, so I think it’s best if you don’t see her.” Nicanor stopped, lit a cigarette, and placed his left hand round his friend’s neck, as if this were the greatest show of tenderness he could allow himself. “I’m so sorry, Damián,” he murmured, “I’m sorry about everything, that Charo’s dead, that she died like this . . .”

“Who was he?”

“It doesn’t matter, Damián, don’t think about that now.”

“But it
does
matter.” He looked at his friend in disbelief. “It matters to me.Who was he?”

Nicanor flicked through his notebook again, clenching his jaws so tightly it looked almost painful.

“José Ignacio Ruiz Perelló,” he said at last, after clearing his throat a couple of times.“Age forty-one, born in Valencia, living in Madrid, in the Parque del Conde de Orgaz. He was married to a woman from a very good family, with lots of money, and he was a civil engineer, with a post high up in the Ministry of Public Works and Town Planning.The people in the bar over there knew him. His wife’s got a swanky house a couple of kilometers away, one of those old holiday homes with a huge garden. Charo and he must have been on their way there when they had the accident. The wife had no idea, of course, she was stunned—Perelló had told her he was going to Lisbon for the opening of a joint Spanish-Portuguese dam on the river Tagus, or something like that. She got here before you did—she’s the woman in the mink coat over there, the one with the dyed blond hair.”

There was a long deep silence, thick, loaded with bitter memories, which was interrupted only when Damián slammed his clenched fist on the roof of the car.

“Whore!” he muttered, his fist raised. “Whore, whore!” he repeated, crashing his fist down again and again and shouting more loudly with every blow, before at last breaking down in tears. “Whore, whore, the fucking whore!”

Juan flinched with every word. His brother’s raging pierced his mind like so many long sharp needles, until he felt he couldn’t bear another moment.

“I’m going to see her,” he whispered to Nicanor, who nodded, smoking silently and not taking his eyes off Damián, ready to catch him when he fell.

Juan walked away as quickly as he could. As he reached the place where the bodies were lying, a traffic policeman stepped in front of him.

“Can I help you, sir?” Inside the uniform was a very young man, no more than twenty-three or twenty-four, with the look of a recently qualified cadet, still trying to follow the rules to the letter, but without much experience of imposing them on others.

“I’d like to see the woman.”

“Are you a relative?”

“Yes, I’m her brother-in-law. My brother can’t see her. He’s completely devastated. He’s the one over there, the one pounding the car.”

The policeman raised his eyebrows with a look that seemed almost comical.

“I know she’s been identified, but I’d like to see her anyway.”

“Right. But I have to warn you, the body is in a very bad state.”

“I can imagine.”