AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know where to go…” I began.
“That’s all right. You’ve done the right thing. Soldevila is the best orthopedic surgeon in Barcelona.” He spoke without addressing anyone in particular.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Barceló sighed and poured me a good shot of brandy in a tumbler. I declined his offer, and it was passed on to Bernarda, past whose lips it disappeared as if by magic.
“Will you please go and have a shower and put on some clean clothes,” Barceló said. “If you go back home looking like that, your father will die of cardiac arrest.”
“It’s all right…. I’m okay,” I said.
“In that case stop trembling. Go on, you can use my bathroom, it’s got a water heater. You know the way. In the meantime I’m going to call your father and tell him…well, I don’t know what I’ll tell him. I’ll think of something.”
I nodded.
“This is still your home, Daniel,” said Barceló as I wandered off down the corridor. “We’ve missed you.”
I found Gustavo Barceló’s bathroom, but not the light switch. I took off my filthy, bloodstained clothes and hauled myself into Gustavo Barceló’s imperial bathtub. A pearly mist filtered in through the window that gave onto the inner courtyard of the building, with enough light to reveal the outline of the room and the pattern of the enameled tiles on the floor and walls. The water came out boiling hot and with much greater pressure than our modest bathroom on Calle Santa Ana could offer; it seemed worthy of a luxury hotel such as I’d never set foot in. I stood under the shower’s steamy rays for a few minutes without moving.
The echo of the blows raining on Fermín still hammered in my ears. I couldn’t get Fumero’s words out of my mind, or the face of that policeman who had held me down. After a while I noticed that the water was beginning to get cold, and I assumed the reserve in my host’s boiler was coming to an end. When I had finished the last drop of lukewarm water, I turned off the tap. The steam rose up my body like silk threads. Through the shower curtains, I noticed a still figure standing by the door, her marble gaze shining like the eyes of a cat.
“You can come out. There’s nothing to worry about, Daniel. Despite all my evil doings, I still can’t see you.”
“Hello, Clara.”
She held out a clean towel toward me. I stretched out my hand and took it, wrapping myself in it with the modesty of a schoolgirl. Even in the steamy darkness, I could see that Clara was smiling, guessing at my movements.
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I didn’t call. Why are you taking a shower in the dark?”
“How do you know the light isn’t on?”
“The buzzing of the bulb,” she said. “You never came back to say good-bye.”
Yes, I did come back, I thought, but you were very busy. The words died on my lips; their animosity seemed distant, ridiculous.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
I got out of the shower and stood on the mat. The steamy air glowed with specks of silver, and the pale light from the window was a white veil on Clara’s face. She hadn’t changed a bit. Four years of absence had not helped me.
“Your voice has changed,” she said. “Have you changed, too, Daniel?”
“I’m just as stupid as before, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
And more of a coward, I thought. She still had that same broken smile that hurt, even in the dark. She stretched out her hand, and, just as on that afternoon in the Ateneo library some eight years before, I understood immediately. I guided her hand to my damp face and felt her fingers rediscovering me, her lips shaping words in silence.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Daniel. Forgive me.”
I took her hand and kissed it in the dark. “No: you must forgive me.”
Any possibility of a melodrama was shattered when Bernarda stuck her head around the door. Despite being quite drunk, she realized that I was naked, dripping, and holding Clara’s hand against my lips with the light out.
“For the love of Christ, Master Daniel, have you no shame? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Some people never learn….”
In her embarrassment Bernarda beat a retreat, and I hoped that once the effects of the brandy wore off, the memory of what she had seen would fade from her mind like the traces of a dream. Clara moved away a few steps and handed me the clothes she held under her left arm.
“My uncle gave me this suit for you to put on. It’s from his younger days. He says you’ve grown a lot and it will fit you. I’ll leave you, so you can get dressed. I shouldn’t have come in without knocking.”
