The Wind From the East (78 page)
Read The Wind From the East Online
Authors: Almudena Grandes
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Contemporary Women
They had all suffered with Maribel, including Tamara. The reappearance of violence, blood, uncertainty, and all the words—accident, injury, prognosis, emergency—that she’d never wanted to hear again, had plunged her back into her deepest fears, where all sounds became screams, all shadows appeared to be threatening, all strangers were murderers. Before all this happened,Tamara had grown very fond of Maribel. She’d always liked her because she behaved like a mother—she talked and worried and smiled and kissed like a mother, and she was there, with a meal on the table, a fridge full of food, and plenty of Band-Aids at the ready. She could solve almost any problem around the house in ways that Sara and Juan couldn’t, and when they were all together, which was almost always, she didn’t differentiate between her and Andrés.This was why Tamara had been the only one who wasn’t amazed or bothered by the fact that her uncle sometimes went out with his cleaner. She’d never understood why Andrés always complained that Maribel wasn’t like other mothers.And she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t happy now that the worst hadn’t happened and Maribel was still alive. It was true that his father had run away, that the police had searched for him and caught him and that he was now in prison, awaiting trial. But it was also true that Andrés had never lived with his father, and that he’d always avoided him if he saw him in town, pedaling away on his bike like a maniac.Tamara pondered all of this but couldn’t understand, however much she tried.
They didn’t see each other so often now, and things felt different. In the first few weeks of September, while Maribel was recovering at home, Andrés had refused to go to school. “I’m staying at home to help my mother,” he’d said to Tamara. She had thought it slightly odd, but all the adults—Juan, Sara, the teachers at school—said he was right, and that he had to recover too, give himself time to get back to normal. But when he came back to school, he was a different Andrés. He didn’t say or do anything that the other kids didn’t do, but he always seemed separate, alone inside himself, as if he didn’t care about anything. He ate, spoke and moved about mechanically as if he were following instructions he didn’t understand. It was the thick dirty fog.Tamara recognized it and hated it, but she didn’t know how to make it go away.This was important, however, because, sensing the fog in Andrés,Tamara had looked inside herself and realized that it was no longer there. She’d overcome it, somehow managed to get rid of it without even noticing. She was very absent-minded ; she often left her espadrilles behind at the beach, her books on her desk at school, bags of sunflower seeds on the counter where she’d put them down while searching in her purse for the right change. But now, she didn’t have to retrace her steps to remember where she’d left the burden of her worst times—it was there, in Andrés’s eyes.
The first week of October, Andrés came to school every day. He sat at his desk next to Tamara and did as she did, but when he opened his books he didn’t read, when he picked up his pen he didn’t write, although he heard the teacher he didn’t listen. The second week, he missed two days of school. The third week, he was only there on the Monday.This was when Tamara mentioned it to Sara, but Sara told her not to worry.
“He’s upset, it’s to be expected. He probably wants to wait until everyone at school has forgotten what’s happened, and make sure they’re not going to bother him about it.”
“But nobody’s bothered him.”
“It makes no difference.” Sara smiled. She didn’t seem at all worried. “Anyway, Andrés is very bright. He can easily make up the classes he’s missed later on.”
“But he tells Maribel he’s going to school and then he doesn’t turn up.”
“Stop worrying about it, Tam, seriously. He must know why he’s doing it.”
Tamara had often thought that adults were stupid, but she’d never been so sure as she was now. So, when Andrés didn’t show up at school the following Monday, she waited until late morning and then went and told the teacher she wasn’t feeling well—she thought she was going to be sick and her head really hurt. As she’d expected, the teacher said she could go home. Then she picked up her bike and went to look for Andrés, but she didn’t find him at the sports track he’d taken her to the afternoon they’d bumped into his father, or the old road that was so good for racing because cars didn’t use it any more, or in the pine woods between the beach and her house, or at the port, or in any of the places they went together. She cycled around town not knowing where else to look, and was riding around aimlessly—she couldn’t go home yet as Maribel would be there and school wasn’t out yet—when she saw him, sitting on a bench with his rucksack beside him, in a new part of town near the industrial estate.The place was deserted.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as she sat down next to him.“You should be at school.”
“So should you.”
“Have you come to get me?” She nodded and he got up. “You’re an idiot.”
He put his rucksack on his back and walked off.Tamara watched him cross the square and wondered where he’d left his bike. It was too far for him to have walked, especially as he now had a brand-new, lightweight, silver mountain bike. He’d got it back in July and it was exactly what he’d always wanted. “What d’you think?” he’d asked as she admired it and gave it a test ride. “Wow!” she’d said as she got off. “It’s really cool! Did your mother buy it for you?” “No, my grandmother,” he’d answered, “she’s owed it to me since my birthday. It was in January, and she said that was a very bad time of year for spending money.” Since then,Andrés had taken his bike everywhere. He’d cleaned and oiled it, and spent most of his pocket money on it. He’d bought a tiny ultra-modern pump, a wing mirror, and a new, more powerful headlight. But here he was, walking back into town without his bike.Tamara went after him.
“Where’s your bike?” she asked as she caught up with him and dismounted, wheeling her bike alongside him.
“I haven’t got it.”
“Did you take it to be repaired?”
“No,” he said, looking straight ahead. “I’ve thrown it away. I didn’t like it.”
Tamara didn’t believe him—he must be completely stupid if he thought she was going to believe that. She said goodbye and set off home. At the first set of traffic lights she looked back at him. He was still walking. She cycled on and suddenly caught sight of his bike in a dead-end street lined with low houses.A little boy who was too small for it was trying to ride it, watched by a smiling woman holding a baby. She was sure it was his, so it must have been stolen.That was the only possible explanation and Andrés was probably just too embarrassed to tell her.Tamara waited until the woman took the baby inside and then went up to confront the thief.
“Hey!” she said, trying to sound as threatening as she could.“Where did you get that bike?”
The little boy didn’t look scared. He stared at her, smiled, and proudly rang the bell a couple of times.
“My dad gave it to me,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” Tamara was disconcerted, but unwilling to give up so easily. “Well, it belongs to a friend of mine.”
Now the little boy looked scared.
“Mama!” he shouted.
The woman came out and explained that the boy’s father had found the bike in a skip, and if she didn’t believe her she could just look at the paintwork—it was all scratched.
Tamara cycled home, suddenly feeling very weary. By the time she got there, her eyes were stinging. Juan was in the sitting room looking at the paper, with Alfonso beside him watching the TV. She turned the volume down.
“You’ve got to do something, Juan,” she said, looking at the floor. “Andrés is bunking off school. He tells Maribel he’s going, but then he doesn’t turn up. He spends all morning just sitting on a bench near the industrial estate, and don’t tell me that’s normal because it isn’t normal. It’s weird.”
Tamara looked up, and in her uncle’s eyes she saw a reflection of her own alarm. So she told him everything. It was very important.The fog was thick and dirty, it filled you up and it blocked out the sun.
Sometimes the mass was dense and black, sometimes it was grey and more diffuse, splitting unexpectedly, dividing into a million black dots against the sky, then coming together again and returning to its original form—a dense black cloud that appeared alive, elastic, suspended in the air by some mysterious law.
“What is that?” Juan asked.
He had returned from the bar carrying a glass in one hand and a bottle of Coca-Cola in the other, and now stood by the table staring at the strange phenomenon.
“Mosquitoes,” Andrés said confidently, not looking at Juan. “They’re angry because they’re going to die.They know winter’s coming, and the east wind’s made them all go mad.They’re attacking a wasp.”
“A wasp?”
“Yes. It’ll manage to kill quite a few of them, but the rest of them will finish it off.”
Juan Olmedo sat down at the table and pushed the Coca-Cola towards him, waiting for Andrés to lose interest in the mosquito cloud, which was still expanding and contracting outside the window. Then suddenly it vanished, along with its invisible trophy.
“That’s it,” the boy said.The mosquitoes had disappeared, leaving the windy beach behind.“They’ve killed the wasp.”
“What’s going on, Andrés?”
The boy turned back to the window, as angry with himself, with Juan, with everything, as the mosquitoes and the dying wasp and the east wind. He didn’t really understand what was happening to him. When he thought back over the past few months, he remembered odd details, fragments of conversations, isolated images, but he didn’t dare put them into a logical, coherent sequence.Yet in his heart of hearts, he knew what they meant, the way the elements all belonged to the same story and linked together to acquire meaning, even though he was unwilling to link them. He’d also known he couldn’t avoid it, and that even if he didn’t tell his mother or Tamara the truth, he’d eventually have to tell Juan. He sat up straighter in his chair. Juan was watching him expectantly, little suspecting that whenever Andrés saw him, or heard him, or whenever somebody mentioned Juan’s name, he remembered the words that had somehow issued unbidden from his lips:“I suppose you’ll be getting her to scrub floors on her knees again, won’t you?” This was all he’d said, and then he’d blushed as he’d never blushed before, the redness thickening around him like a dark clot, gagging him and making it difficult to breathe. He still felt this way as they sat in the little bar at Punta Candor, the town’s furthermost beach.When the doorbell rang and he went to answer, he was at home on his own.“Mama’s not here,” he’d said, about to close the door in Juan’s face. “She’s gone out to do some shopping.” But Juan quickly stepped in. “I haven’t come to see her,” he said, “I’ve come to see you.”Andrés didn’t want to go with Juan. He didn’t feel like a walk or a Coke, and he certainly didn’t feel like talking. He knew what would happen, he knew it, yet he offered only a feeble excuse: “I’m watching TV,” he said stupidly.“You can watch it later,” Juan replied,“we won’t be long.” So Andrés fetched his jacket, telling himself it made no difference, if it wasn’t Juan, it would be someone else—his mother, Sara, his teacher, the headmaster—and he’d had enough, he was tired of wandering around all day, his mind held hostage by a few words, a few images, a few details that he didn’t want to put in their proper order. His mother’s lover was still looking at him, calmly, expectantly.“I suppose you’ll be getting her to scrub floors on her knees again, won’t you?”Andrés decided to tell him everything.When he spoke, his voice sounded strange, as if it belonged to someone else.
“It was me,” he said, and stopped. Juan Olmedo nodded slowly, his face quite expressionless, as if he were determined not to be surprised or shocked by anything Andrés said.“It was me who told my father everything.”
“I’m your dad, aren’t I? And you’re my son. Nothing can change that.” The first time, Andrés didn’t dare tell him.The first time, he didn’t even know that his father had come from Chipiona to see him. It was his grandmother who phoned:“Why don’t you come over for tea?” she’d said. “I have a surprise for you.” Andrés thought it must be the bike—she’d promised him one so many times since his birthday in January that his mother grew cross every time he mentioned it. “Why on earth do you want a new bike? You already have one that works perfectly well.When it breaks, I’ll buy you a new one.You don’t need to go asking other people for one.”These days, all his mother ever thought about was saving her money, and there were some things she’d never understand. Andrés had been taken aback when he’d found his father at his grandmother’s house. They were both in the living room, all smiles, as if they thought he’d be delighted. “What about the bike?” he’d asked. “What are you going on about a bike for?” his grandmother said, getting up to give him a kiss. “Your father’s here! Aren’t you pleased to see him? Surely you love him more than a bike!” “Well, no,” thought Andrés, “I don’t.” But he didn’t say so. He sat down beside his father and agreed to have a chocolate milkshake, because he knew he had no choice. He’d last seen his father over two months ago, the afternoon he and Tamara had gone to the stationery shop, and he was pretty sure that was about the longest he’d ever spent with him, the longest conversation they’d ever had, and even then, his father had said just enough to make Andrés feel deeply ashamed. He’d always loved his father from a distance, loved a version of him that was secret, hidden, and which the man himself had destroyed, publicly, in one fell swoop.
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