The Wind From the East (74 page)
Read The Wind From the East Online
Authors: Almudena Grandes
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Contemporary Women
Sara hadn’t planned this. After all, she’d been a good, honest, conscientious worker all her life.
“What consequences could there be?” asked her godmother, intrigued.“Fewer problems and more money in the bank, as Loreto says.”
Sara closed her eyes briefly, put her napkin on the table, sat back and crossed her arms before replying. It wasn’t easy for her to continue because she’d just realized that she needed to measure every word, to tug carefully at the gold thread she had just found by chance.
“Well, it’s not as simple as that.Your financial situation would change overnight. Doña Loreto knows nothing about tax—why should she?— but land isn’t taxed in the same way as capital, Mami. Owners of farms get subsidies, advantageous credit terms with low interest rates, they can defer tax if the harvest has been poor or worse than expected, and of course they can claim a large part of their expenses against tax—wages, costs of machinery, repairs, things like that.You know all this already, or it should sound familiar, because I’ve told you about it several times. Money in the bank, on the other hand, has no tax breaks. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
At this she stopped, though she was no longer playing for time. She knew exactly what she was going to say next, but she wanted to check the old lady’s reaction first. It was entirely as she expected.
“So what could we do?”
“Well, we’d have to do something else with the money, find other investments, choose funds with tax advantages, and we’d need to keep changing our strategy as your capital increases. If you decide to sell all of it, and sell it quickly, we’d have to take more risks. Otherwise, the Revenue could claim over half of the profit.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed the old lady. Sara had won the first round. Now furious, as befitted a wealthy Spanish lady who hadn’t paid a penny in tax during the forty years of the dictatorship, Doña Sara clenched her fists, banged them on the table and leaned forward. “Absolutely not! Do whatever you think is best.”
“Well. Let’s not be hasty,” Sara said, as she tried to calm the storm she’d just unleashed.“First, we need to consider what we’re going to do, and how we’re going to do it. But if you do decide to sell, I think it would be a good idea to look for another stockbroker, someone who’s less conservative than Don Ricardo.”
Sara couldn’t possibly use Don Antonio’s stockbroker, but she didn’t know who else to go to, or more precisely, she knew that the only person who could help her was the one person she didn’t want to ask for a favor.That night, as she went to bed, she discounted the idea. She continued to discount it every night and every morning that autumn, while she had meetings with managers and tenants, agricultural experts and town clerks, so as to divide up her godmother’s country estates into lots to be sold, the best ones quickly—such as the land with good water, very valuable in a province as dry as Ciudad Real—the others more slowly. She discounted the idea all winter as well, when the owner of the neighboring land decided to buy the plots she was selling in Salamanca, thus creating the largest livestock farm in the region. And in March, when Doña Margarita’s son made an offer, low but irresistible, for the house where Doña Sara’s husband had conducted many of his adulterous escapades, Sara pushed aside the idea yet again. Every night as she went to bed, and every morning as she got up, she thought about it again, decided to go ahead, then forbade herself to do so; yet right from the start she knew there was no one else she could turn to. Her social life, which had never been very active, except in the good times she wanted to forget, had dwindled to nothing. Finding a business partner through one of the intermediaries she’d met as her godmother’s financial representative would not only mean she ran the risk of being reported to the police, but also, in the least bad scenario, of being blackmailed for the rest of her life. She couldn’t see another way, couldn’t make up her mind. Meanwhile, time was passing,
By the spring of 1990, the banknotes were piling up in the bottom of her wardrobe at such a rate that, on occasion, she opted to forego some of the undeclared money that she had so far reserved for herself. The money was no longer the problem.While she struggled with the idea of calling Vicente, Sara Gómez Morales, without the crutch of her past, began to wonder what she really wanted to be. Before her stretched two different paths. One led to being a wealthy and fairly honorable woman, a sort of luxury version of Señorita Sevilla.The other would turn her into a seriously wealthy fraudster. For the past few months she had been viewing apartments again in her spare time, although she was now looking for something different—a very large, old apartment, cheap enough that she could buy it using the rent from her other two apartments, and so dilapidated that the refurbishment would absorb all the money accumulating at the bottom of her wardrobe.The plan was to add value to her investment, and then eventually sell it off and start all over again.This was the safest, least nerve-racking path, and the one that most involved Vicente. But without completely abandoning this scheme, she chose the other path.
When at last she sold the house in Toledo, Doña Sara divided the money up between her nephews and nieces, and paid the gift tax out of her own funds.“I never liked that house,” was all she said. She bought Sara a new, very expensive car—her first BMW—but she didn’t give her any money. Sara had been expecting this. However fond Doña Sara was of her, however much she needed her and preferred her to Amparo and her brothers, Sara would never inherit the shawl, only the fringes. Children of servants are only fostered, never adopted, because blood is thicker than water, and rules are rules. She wasn’t going to cry over it at this stage but, beyond her own feelings, the situation of her godmother’s current accounts was becoming unsustainable. Sara would have liked to let another summer go by, to give herself longer to reflect, rein in her ambition or prepare herself better inwardly, but she didn’t have the time. She’d wasted almost a year. If she waited until September and the transaction was delayed for some reason, the tax year might end with no income declared.And now there was much more at stake than her prestige in managing Doña Sara’s finances efficiently.
He wasn’t in the phone book, of course.As she dialed the party headquarters, Sara’s hands felt clammy, her legs were shaking, and when she spoke her voice suddenly sounded halting and childlike.The first person she asked for, however, was at his desk, and he remembered her.“I don’t think I can get hold of him right now,” he told her,“but I’ll be seeing him in a couple of hours—we’re having lunch together—so leave me a number he can contact you on.That’ll be the best thing.” He was lying, but ten minutes later the phone rang, and it was Vicente González de Sandoval, not his secretary.
They agreed to meet the following day, at two thirty, in a restaurant that was new to her, a big place that must once have been the cellars, or coach houses or even the stables of a palace. The walls were exposed brick, the windows small and high up, and ceiling fans cooled the air, lending the place the air of a grotto in an eighteenth-century garden. The teak furniture was in a vaguely colonial style that lightened the classical look of the rugs, and there were plenty of large lustrous plants cleverly placed for maximum effect. The glasses were Portuguese blue glass, the plates white, and there was no cutlery to be seen. The place suited Vicente’s taste for pared-down luxury, one more station on the journey that Sara had enjoyed with him for a while. She was sure he’d been thinking about the place the day before as she tried to explain, hesitantly, a little incoherently, that she’d like to meet up with him to discuss something too important to talk about on the phone.The asphalt outside was so hot it seemed about to melt beneath the merciless June sun, but as she entered the restaurant, Sara was shocked by more than just the change in temperature.The echo of another time, another place stopped her dead in her tracks for a moment by the bar.Then she saw him. He was sitting at a table at the back, looking over some papers, and wearing small reading glasses—something he’d never needed when they were together. He was fifty now, with grey hair and a weary look—the only man she’d ever loved. For a moment, she felt as gauche and naive as a sixteen-year-old, but just as she was about to run from the restaurant, he looked up, saw her, removed his glasses and stood up. She smiled involuntarily as she walked over to him.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. He kissed her on both cheeks—real kisses, his lips touching her face as he put an arm around her waist and held her against him a second longer than necessary, so that she became very aware of his embrace.“I’m well. And you?”
“Hm.” He frowned and shrugged, then he laughed. “I suppose I’m well too. Sit down. I’m so pleased you called me, I really wanted to see you.”
The courtesies continued with a conversation on the possibilities of the menu, which led to a quick summary of their respective lives. Vicente’s children were well—the eldest was already at university whilst the youngest was about to start. Sara’s parents were both dead, and she was living with her godmother again.Vicente raised his eyebrows when she told him this.
“I saw your wedding photo in the paper,” she couldn’t help saying, and even added:“Your wife’s stunning.”
He smiled wryly.
“She certainly is stunning. But she’s no longer my wife.We divorced a couple of years ago. But, of course, the photographers weren’t interested in that.”
“Oh,” said Sara, trying to keep any hint of bitterness from her voice, to remain detached and light-heartedly ironic. “There I was thinking you’d never leave María Belén, and it turns out you’ve left several women on the trot.”
“Well, yes, that’s how it goes,” he said.“You can get used to anything—getting divorced, getting married, getting divorced again.”
“So, any day now you might be getting married again?”
“I don’t think so.” He paused, looked at her, and laughed. “Marriage has always ended up being rather expensive for me. Although my girlfriend’s rather keen on having a wedding, that’s for sure.”
“I suppose she’s very young.”
“Not that young. She’s thirty-six, although she doesn’t seem it. Because of the way she acts, I mean.”
“And she’s stunning?”
“Well, fully dressed she’s fairly normal, but without her clothes she’s impressive.” Sara laughed and he looked at her.“What about you?”
“Oh, I can’t think about that sort of thing nowadays. I have other plans, which is why I called you.”
“I was crazy about you, Sara.”
He said it firmly, quietly, with the same voice he would have used to order a bottle of wine—a much graver tone than the urgent, anxious voice he’d used when he said,“I’m crazy about you, Sara,” after every row, after every parting and every inevitable reconciliation.“I’m crazy about you, Sara, and you know it.” Sara tried to smile, to appear composed, and wondered why everything had to be so difficult. Again she felt tempted to rush out, but that would have seemed ridiculous, so after folding her napkin yet again and taking a few sips of wine, she managed to collect her thoughts, and reminded herself of the reason she was there.
“I . . . I need to ask you a favor,Vicente. A very big favor.” He abandoned the nostalgic pose of the rejected lover and sat up straight in his chair.“Before I begin, I have to warn you, it’s quite a delicate matter—definitely risky for me, but possibly dangerous for you, because of your position and your political career. If you can’t help me, you must tell me—I’ll understand.”
“I’m getting excited,” he said. Sara couldn’t help laughing at this and it released all the tension that her words had created.“What’s up?”
“I need a stockbroker or a financial adviser for a rather special piece of business. The person would need to be very capable, very discreet, absolutely trustworthy and above all, not in the least bit curious. They mustn’t ask questions, or pass on any gossip. And they must be prepared to run certain risks, possibly even to operate on the fringes of illegality.”
She said it all in one burst, not daring to look up from her plate.When she did, she found him looking very surprised. But he was also grinning and his eyes shone like those of a little boy who’d got to pick the hand containing the present.
“I’m getting more and more excited,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Are you bankrolling a guerrilla army or dealing with the Mafia or something?”
“No, no, nothing as exciting as that. I told you I’m back living with my godmother again.You remember that whole story, don’t you?” He nodded, and she went on:“Well, she’s quite elderly now and she doesn’t have any family, apart from three nieces and nephews who only visit occasionally, but they will inherit her fortune when she dies. However, I’m looking after all her business interests—everything, including managing her assets, because I’m her legal representative. She’s very wealthy. Extraordinarily wealthy. So, let’s just say that I have an opportunity to inherit some of her money.”
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