The Lone Woman

The Dream

THE DREAM HAD several acts, like a play, each with its own characters and its own scenery. Whenever the bus jolted or there was a sudden noise, she would half-open her eyes and almost wake up, and then the scenes would lose some of their purity and re-form with remnants of memory and ideas clinging to the dream the way mud and blades of grass cling to the shoes of someone walking through the forest. Nevertheless, despite these interruptions, the dream, which was fairly long, remained coherent from start to finish.

The scenes in the first part of the dream took place in a large garden, about ten years before, when she was only twenty-seven.

“You see? They’ll soon be out,” said a rather aristocratic-looking old man, walking on to the stage. With the silver handle of his walking stick he was pointing to a row of cherry trees whose branches were thick with buds.

“It’s too early, isn’t it? It could still snow,” she said. She was standing on a wrought-iron balcony that formed part of the loggia of a beautiful stone house.

“According to something I read the other day, it hasn’t snowed in Biarritz in March since 1921,” said a third person, taking the stage. He was a young man of delicate appearance, about twenty-three years old, who expressed himself shyly. He was called Larrea, and people said he was there because he was the main representative of the most radical of the political organizations gathered together in the aristocrat’s house.

“The main representative of the most radical political organization,” she repeated, approaching the frontier between dream and waking, and she suddenly remembered everything surrounding that scene. She and another fifteen militants — all of them members of four different organizations involved in the armed struggle — were meeting in the palace of an aristocrat on the outskirts of Biarritz with the aim of analysing the possibilities of a joint strategy. Three days after the meeting began, they had reached complete agreement except on one point: should they attack all banks, or should they respect those founded originally in the Basque country and with Basque money? On that point, the rather delicate young man and his group had taken one position and everyone else the opposite. The trivial conversation begun by the old aristocrat about the cherry trees had been merely an attempt to relieve the tension arising from that confrontation.

“Shall we go out into the garden?” the aristocrat asked the group gathered in the loggia. “We can sit at the oval table beneath the magnolia tree and have an aperitif. It’s more than an hour before supper.”

The group gave a murmur of approval.

“You should bring a sweater or a jacket. You’ll get cold,” Larrea said to her.

The sound of a horn almost woke her from her dream, but a few seconds later, the images of that meeting in Biarritz continued to parade through her mind clearly and precisely, as real as the plastic coffee cup or the books that she had held in her hand. First, she saw the garden belonging to the aristocrat, and in the garden, beneath a magnolia tree, an oval table carved out of stone. Most of the militants who had taken part in the debates were sitting round that table; it was almost dark, because the shade from the tree obscured the little remaining daylight.

Sitting at the table, she had the impression that her mind was thinking of its own accord, and that the ideas it was forming were phenomena as remote from her own will as the chemical reactions taking place in her intestines, as the beating of her heart. Surprisingly — until that moment she had been unaware of what was happening to her — all that involuntary activity revolved around that young man, Larrea. There was only one more day left of the meeting, after which, since both of them belonged to different, almost rival organizations, they would not see each other again.

Knowing this troubled her. Little by little, ignoring the conversation taking place at the table between the aristocrat and her colleagues at the meeting, that initial idea engendered a twin: she could not accept that separation, she had to make contact with Larrea. At once, her mind provided her with a new and strangely attractive possibility: yes, she should make contact with him, but in the literal sense; she must reach out and grasp his hand, right there, before the whole group went upstairs to supper. Luckily, Larrea had sat down near her. They were separated only by the large bulk of a militant known as the Yeti.

The aristocrat had just finished telling an anecdote, and everyone around the table burst out laughing. She did not. She felt more and more troubled. She was beginning to understand; she was beginning to understand what lay behind some of her own attitudes during the debates. She had never once tried to refute the young man’s arguments. On the contrary, she had felt uncomfortable when some member of her own group, the Yeti for example, had spoken to him brusquely or disrespectfully. And during the breaks, during the lunches and suppers too, she had always tried to sit near him.

She sipped at her aperitif and ate the olive that came with the drink. Should she admit it? Should she say that word? It was more than a year since her divorce. Was she in love?

The aristocrat went on talking, trying to take the tension out of the situation. He had a glass in one hand and she could just see the end of the cocktail stick holding the olive above the edge of the glass.

“When he puts the olive in his mouth, I’ll take Larrea’s hand,” she thought. It was not going to be an easy operation, since she had to reach behind the Yeti’s back, very carefully, so that no one would notice. What would happen if someone at the table realized? And what if Larrea rejected her hand? Those thoughts made her heart beat faster. It was true that beneath the magnolia tree it was growing ever darker, but the risk — the risk of appearing ridiculous — also seemed to her to be growing ever greater.

She didn’t have to wait long for the signal; the aristocrat picked up the cocktail stick and, after various attempts — his eyesight obviously wasn’t very good — he managed to place the olive in his mouth. Then he snapped the cocktail stick in two and placed it in one of the ashtrays on the table.

She leaned back and reached her left arm out behind the Yeti’s back.

“When are we going to eat? I’m hungry,” said someone. Her arm froze.

“Let’s finish our drinks first,” said the aristocrat.

Between Larrea and the Yeti there was a wider gulf than she had supposed, almost another arm’s length. It became even more difficult when the Yeti, misinterpreting her posture — she had leaned her body towards him — drew her to him and started to embrace her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

“It’s cold, isn’t it?” said one of the other women who was sitting next to the aristocrat, and two or three people agreed. At any moment, people would start to get up from the table.

She freed herself from her colleague’s embrace and made a last attempt to reach Larrea, stretching her arm, her hand, her index finger as far as she could.

Then something ineffable happened. Contrary to all probabilities, the tip of her index finger touched the tip of another index finger. Startled by that unexpected contact, she rapidly withdrew her hand and resumed her normal posture at the table. She looked over at Larrea. He had his arm outstretched too and was holding out his hand to her behind the Yeti’s back.

The dream images provoked in her the same shudder she had felt ten years ago in the garden in Biarritz, and she snuggled down in her seat so as to savour that feeling. But she couldn’t. The bus, which was still flying along at nearly ninety miles an hour, hit a dip and she nodded a little, enough to interrupt her dream and to force her to open her eyes. For a moment, on the other side of the window, she saw a village surrounded by pine trees and a great strip of blue sky. Nice, she thought, it was nice that blue sky. Then she closed her eyes and tried to go back to the scene in the garden.

It was useless. The dream had taken another direction and a new scene replaced the previous one. She and her colleague in the organization, the one they called the Yeti, were standing in a maritime museum arguing; they were in the room containing the gigantic skeleton of a whale.

“Just what are you up to?” asked the Yeti.

“What do you mean?” she said, walking away towards the whale’s tailbone. She felt a stab of pain in her head.

“Do keep still, will you? What I have to tell you is very serious,” said the Yeti. He had a clumsy gait and disliked having to move.

Most of the schoolchildren who were visiting the museum at that moment were either looking at the tropical fish aquarium or at the one containing octopuses. Only one little girl had remained apart from the others. She was looking at the black lampreys, at their white teeth. Perhaps she was an image of her? Perhaps she had been like that, a solitary child?

The question provoked by the image in the dream vanished at once. Again she saw the Yeti’s face.

“You know perfectly well what I mean. You’re going out with that guy Larrea. I know you’re seeing each other. I’m certain of it, absolutely certain.”

Despite his appearance, he wasn’t rough-mannered. He spoke gently, as if it pained him to have to say those words. She sighed and stroked one of the whale’s ribs.

“Who told you? The security people?”

“It’s very dangerous for the organization, very dangerous indeed.”

The Yeti always repeated everything, so that the idea would go in, like a nail into wood.

“Why is it dangerous?”

The words left her mouth without creating any echo inside her at all. Absurd thoughts occurred to her. For example, how big would the whale have been whose skeleton she was looking at?

“The police know about him and all the members of his little group. They tell them what to do.”

“That’s not true.”

What speed could that whale have reached when it lived in the sea? How deep could it dive? Could it go down to where the lampreys lived? The questions came into her mind unbidden.

“I tell you it’s true. The police pull the strings and they move. They probably know about you too.”

“Look, I know they take a different line on things, but to say that they’re under police control is insulting. That’s pure sectarianism.”

“You can’t continue with your relationship. You’ll have to separate immediately. These are not just empty words. It’s an order from the organization.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“There’s nothing to think about, it’s an order, don’t you understand, an order!”

The Yeti stopped shouting and gave a long sigh.

“It’s an order, an order. You must understand,” he said, resuming his sorrowful tone and putting an arm around her shoulder. She burst into tears. The message had at last reached the deepest layer of her consciousness. Yes, now she understood. She would not see Larrea again or, rather, she would see him one more time, just to say goodbye.

She opened her eyes and the light dazzled her. The sun occupied a large part of the sky, the part she could see through the window, and as far as she could make out, it was beating down on a grey desert. How many serpents lived there? What had become of paradise after Eve listened to the serpent? Had it become a grey desert like the one they were crossing? She looked again at what lay outside and she saw a straight line formed by pylons and a flock of crows circling one of them. How many crows lived in that desert?

“I’m asleep,” she said to herself in an attempt to exorcize those senseless questions. She snuggled down in her seat again and looked for other images. She wanted the dream to go on.

She spent some moments with her eyes closed, trying to follow the conversations that she could hear in that part of the bus. Then — the voices seemed to grow ever farther off — she saw a flower, a violet-coloured geranium. She knew that she was back inside the dream again. She had seen that flower on her last meeting with Larrea, through the frosted glass of a bathroom window.

“What do you want to do, then, just leave it?” said Larrea. He was having a shower and the hot water was reddening the skin on his arms and shoulders.

“You know I don’t,” she said from the stool in the bathroom. She was wrapped in a large towel, and was smoking a cigarette.

“I don’t think we’ve got much option,” said Larrea, turning off the shower. “I can’t ask you to join my organization, and it’s the same with you, you can’t ask me to join yours. No one would take it seriously. Besides, I really don’t think they’d let me in.”

The geranium on the other side of the window appeared and disappeared depending on Larrea’s movements in the bath.

“The way you put it, we only have two alternatives,” she said. “We can either disobey the order and stay together, or we can say goodbye right now.”

For the first time since that meeting in the aristocrat’s house, there was tension between them.

“We mustn’t go thinking we’re Romeo and Juliet. We’re not a couple of adolescents,” said Larrea, picking up a towel and drying himself. He was smiling, but it was as if he were smiling to himself.

“How old were Romeo and Juliet?” she asked him. The decision they were about to take made her voice sound hoarse, huskier than usual.

“I don’t know about Romeo, but Juliet was about fifteen or sixteen.”

“Then it’s true. They were much younger than we are. Anyway, I’m going to get dressed.”

She got up from the stool and left the bathroom.

“I suppose you think I don’t mind,” Larrea said as she was walking down the corridor.

After that, the scene in the dream changed again, and moved from the bathroom to the Plaza Condorcet, where the house was. She saw Larrea leaving to look for his car while she, standing on the pavement, was wondering what would happen next. Would he leave immediately, without saying goodbye? Ever since that first time, when their hands had met in the darkness, their goodbyes had always followed the same pattern: Larrea would wind down his car window, and, a few yards before he caught up with her, he would stretch out his arm and she would reach out too and their hands would lightly touch.

Larrea drove out of the car park and, keeping to their ritual, he opened his window and put out his arm. For her part, she stepped out on to the road and prepared herself for that gesture of farewell. But for some reason, it didn’t work that day. Their two hands didn’t touch.

Larrea braked, as if he were going to stop in order to repeat their goodbyes, but in the end he drove on. She didn’t know how to react either and simply watched him drive off.

She would never again see her lover. He would die about a fortnight later trying to disembark on a beach in Vizcaya. According to the rumours, the police had set a trap.

Suddenly the Yeti’s face appeared on the scene.

“You women just muddle everything up, everything,” he shouted. “How can you say that we betrayed him? If we wanted to eliminate him, we could have shot him ourselves! We could have shot him, do you understand? We don’t go around giving tip-offs to the police, you know that as well as I do. Look, I’ll tell you what, you’re obviously very upset. Why don’t you go to Paris for a few days until you calm down.”

“I don’t want to go to Paris. I’d rather be involved in a raid or something.”

“You see what you women are like?” The Yeti was tugging at his beard and gesticulating. “No, you’re not taking part in any raid. You’ll go to Paris. More than that, you’ll keep well away from the organization for at least three months.”

A new voice entered the scene.

“They’re dangerous people all right,” it was saying. It was a man’s voice. “They spend all those years submitting themselves to a harsh regime of discipline, committing all kinds of atrocities, and then they can’t adapt to everyday life. It’s just like the soldiers in the Vietnam war.”

“The other day, we showed a video about that, about a Vietnam veteran who took some customers in a supermarket hostage for some really stupid reason, because he couldn’t find a jar of jam, I think it was.”

It was the voice of the hostess on the bus, she was sure of it. Were they talking about her? Her heart began to pound. A few seconds later, the man who was talking to the hostess confirmed her fears.

“Look at her, she’s asleep now and she looks like a perfectly normal woman, but she’s only been out of prison for a day and already she’s been up to mischief. Last night she marked a man for life. She cut him really badly with some sharp object. I don’t know quite what the object was, because they’re very odd cuts. They’re not clean cuts. Anyway, that’s why I’m here, to take her back to prison. She’s capable of anything, she is.”

She seemed to recognize that voice. Wasn’t it the man at the station in Barcelona who had offered her a light? That guy with the red tie, was he there? No sooner had she asked herself that question than someone hit her on the knee and she cried out.

SHE SAT UP in her seat and opened her eyes. Everything around her was quiet. The hostess was talking to a very big man with a face like a boxer, while, behind her, the two nuns were reading with their faces turned away from the images on the video screen. No, she hadn’t really cried out. The cry had remained inside her dream, on the other side, inside that reality which, just then, seemed to her more solid, more intense.

She looked around the bus again, at the tiny space which, despite its apparent immateriality, was now the real stage on which her life was being played out. The nuns continued reading and the hostess was listening to what the passenger who looked like a boxer was saying about the film. The noise of the engine was still there too, gently enfolding everything. In fact, the only things that weren’t in their place were her books and her coffee. The books were on the floor and the plastic coffee cup had rolled around the table spilling the dregs.

She gathered the books together, mopped up the coffee with a paper serviette and got to her feet in order to throw it in the bin fixed on the metallic wall of the toilet. For some reason, her movement attracted the attention of the nun with green eyes, who stopped reading and turned towards her. It was only a brief look, but enough to reveal the tension on her face. She was frowning and her face seemed deeply lined.

“Why should you have to watch the film if you don’t want to? You should ask them to turn it off,” she said, guessing the reason behind that tension.

On the video screen, a maid was running along a gallery in a palace, pursued by the master of the house, a foppish chap with slicked-down hair. She was wearing a dressing gown with apparently nothing underneath. She would occasionally change direction abruptly, affording the viewer a glimpse of her bottom.

“The hostess says she can’t turn it off,” replied the nun with green eyes, turning back to her. She was talking loudly, in an energetic voice.

“Why can’t she?”

The hostess was aware of the conversation, but didn’t want to intervene.

“Apparently that would be depriving the passengers who come downstairs to smoke of seeing the film. Thanks for your concern though. There aren’t many people these days who would care about two old nuns like us.”

“That’s all right,” she said, feeling slightly embarrassed. That exchange just confirmed to her the oddness of the situation. That was the first time since she was at school that she had spoken to a nun.

She sat down at the table again and put on the headphones.

“Don’t run away, Marie. I bet you’d make a wonderful lover,” she heard the man say. On the video screen, the half-naked maid and the fop were face to face in a barn next to the palace.

“What’s got into you?” said the maid, taking a step back.

“Come here! I’m master of this house and everything in it,” bawled the fop grabbing the maid and tugging at her dressing gown.

“Have you gone mad? You’ve no right!” protested the maid. She was a very bad actress and pronounced the words flatly.

The film jumped a few frames. The fop appeared in close-up on the screen.

“Forgive me, please!” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean to offend you! I love you! Why don’t you love me? Please, I beg you, love me in return!”

She put the earphones down on the table and rubbed her eyes with her two hands, as if she wanted to wash them clean. Then she lit a cigarette and sat looking out of the window at the grey desert they were crossing, at the mountains in the distance, at the sky. But she couldn’t see anything very clearly, because the sunlight — almost as strong as a summer sun — was piercing the layer of clouds and cloaking everything in a resplendent whiteness.

The bright light inside the bus gave definition to the column of smoke from her cigarette and she amused herself watching its evolutions, following its curls and spirals up to the ceiling where they dissolved into nothing. For a moment, she thought about her life and about the things that she wanted to forget; she thought that she should try to transform part of her life into smoke which, later, like her cigarette smoke, would form spirals and curls that finally vanished into air. Was such alchemy possible? Could life become smoke? Even the worst aspects of life?

Holding her cigarette between her lips, she put two of the books from the table back in her suitcase, the novel by Stendhal and the essay by Oteiza. Then she looked at those remaining in the pile and chose another two books: the anthology of Chinese poetry and the collection of poems by Emily Dickinson.

Though far apart, the two hearts

love each other in silence, without speaking.

The woman sews by the light of the candle,

the man walks beneath the moon.

As soon as he reaches the stairs, the man knows

that his wife is still awake.

A noise is heard in the silence of the night:

the noise of scissors falling to the floor.

* * *

Reading that poem took her back to prison. She could see herself lying on the bunk in her cell on a Friday or Saturday night, listening to the laughter of people walking along some street near the prison, listening to that laughter and thinking that, despite everything, love was what mattered most in life. Thinking that the cliché was true, that the Chinese poems were telling the truth, that even the crassest of songs were right about that.

Her eyes drifted back to the window. The hills that had succeeded the grey desert were covered in scrub, apart from a few cultivated areas, but they were still empty. For a moment, she thought about the insects, mice and birds that must live there. Then she thought about the silence that would surround the lives of those beings, and about how hard that life would be. But there was no need to pity them: insects, mice and birds were very strong creatures, prepared to face up to any misfortune.

It was quiet inside the bus too. Nothing was happening, everything was still. The film on the video had ended. The two nuns were dozing in their seats. The hostess was reading a magazine. The passenger who looked like a boxer had gone back to his seat.

“I was quite right,” she thought, remembering the letter that she had posted in Barcelona. No, she didn’t want to see her friend of recent years again. Fuck off, Andoni. Solitude was preferable to a mediocre relationship. In fact, anything was better than that.

She put out her cigarette and rubbed her face again. She had to put a brake on the impetus driving her thoughts along. She was thinking too much, remembering too much, she was getting too tired.

“I must get a grip on myself,” she thought. But she knew how difficult that was. After four years in prison, surrounded always by the same objects and by the same people, subject to the same timetable day after day, everything that she encountered outside seemed sharp and violent and dragged her spirits off on a kind of roller-coaster ride in which, with dizzying speed, white succeeded black, euphoria succeeded depression, joy succeeded sadness. The worst thing was that these ups and downs wore her out, sapped the energy that she was going to need from tomorrow onwards in the real world, not in the world of her dreams or on that bus travelling along an anonymous, almost abstract motorway. Would she find work? Would they have her back at the hospital where she used to work before? They would not. Or so it seemed from what her father had said in a letter; the new intake of nurses had filled all the posts, the good and the bad.

The bus began to brake and she suddenly found herself looking at the driver of the car that was overtaking them at that moment. He was a slim, well-dressed young man and the back seat of his car was full of newspapers. What did he do? Did he have a permanent job? How much would he earn a month? And how much would nurses earn a month now? The car drove on and the bus turned off to the right. They were approaching a service area. Shortly afterwards, the hostess picked up her microphone and made an announcement to the passengers. The stop would last half an hour.

The bus drove straight past the petrol station and the lorry park, over to the area in front of the motel and the supermarket. There was another bus belonging to the same company parked there, the bus doing the same route in reverse, from Bilbao to Barcelona.

The hostess picked up the microphone again and explained that they would be making the usual change, she and the driver would move over to the other bus, while the hostess and the driver who had come from Bilbao would move into theirs. She wished them a good journey and thanked them on behalf of the company.

“That’s good news,” she said under her breath, thinking about the promised change, and getting up out of her seat. That was one of the advantages that the bus had over prison. You didn’t get stuck with certain people, the unpleasant hostesses were only with you for half the journey.

The passengers on the upper deck started coming down the metal stairs. She picked up her cigarettes and the book by Emily Dickinson and hurried to the door. She wanted to get out as quickly as possible and to be the first at the counter in the cafeteria, so as not to waste a single moment of that half-hour break. She would buy a drink and a sandwich and go and sit on a grassy mound that she had seen as they passed the petrol station. It seemed like a good place from which to study the landscape.

There were lots of cats at the entrance to the motel cafeteria and one of them walked over to her as soon as she got off the bus. It had a black head and back and a white front. It was battered and scarred.

“What makes you think I’ve got any food? I haven’t bought anything yet,” she said as she passed it. The cat followed her, its eyes fixed on her hands. “Don’t be silly. These aren’t edible things. This is a book and this is a cigarette packet,” she added. Before she had finished what she was saying, the cat shot off towards a passenger who was getting off the bus carrying a sandwich in his hand.

The counter in the cafeteria was very long and the servers were placed at about three-yard intervals. The two at the end were free and she went over to them.

“I’ll have one of those sandwiches and two cans of Heineken,” she said.

“What sort of sandwich do you want?” asked one of the servers, lifting the cover on the display cabinet on the counter and picking up a pair of tongs. Almost at the same time, the other took the beers out of the fridge and set them before her. They worked really fast. “There’s salad, ham and cheese, cheese, tuna and mayonnaise, anchovy, egg and bacon.”

As he named the different sandwiches, he tapped them with the tongs. She found it hard to decide. She was bewildered by such variety.

As they came into the cafeteria, the other passengers formed two lines, one going down to the toilets, the other going over to the counter to order something. A very large woman waved to her from the queue for the toilets.

“Who’s that?” she thought, responding to the wave with a nod of her head. The woman’s face seemed familiar. Where had she seen her before? In Bilbao, before she was sent to prison?

She hurriedly left the cafeteria and went over to the grassy knoll next to the petrol station. She didn’t want to meet anyone from her previous life; even before she had reached Bilbao and her parents’ house, she was already dreading the inevitable comments from the neighbours who had known her since she was a child, how are you, don’t you worry, you’ll soon forget about prison. Even more than their remarks she was dreading the replies she would have to make, smiling, playing dumb, pretending that she didn’t know what they were really thinking, poor thing, what’s she going to do now, if she wasn’t divorced at least she’d have something to fall back on, her father doesn’t deserve all this trouble at his age.

“Are you going for a walk?” she heard someone say as she passed the supermarket next to the cafeteria. This time it was the two nuns who greeted her.

Her mind suddenly lit up. The large woman who had said hello to her in the cafeteria didn’t belong to her previous life. She was one of the passengers on the bus, the woman in the next seat in fact, the woman with whom she had exchanged a few words before going down to the smokers’ section.

“I’m just going over there. I feel in need of some fresh air,” she said to the nuns, pointing to the hillock near the petrol station. The petrol station was red and yellow, and the hillock was covered in bright green grass.

“Enjoy your meal,” said the two nuns when they saw the plastic bag she was carrying in her hand.

She had to make a special effort to walk like any ordinary person. She felt an impulse to walk very slowly, or better still, to take sixty-five steps as fast as she could in order simply to turn around and start all over again. That was what she used to do in the women’s exercise yard in prison, and after four years of going back and forth thousands of times, that habit had become superimposed on her natural liking for leisurely walks and aimless wanderings. The sixty-five steps had ended up becoming a distance set in stone, a rule.

“Two exercise yards and a half,” her feet told her, or so she imagined. She was already at the petrol station. Another exercise yard to go and she would reach the top of the little hill, the observation point she had chosen for the first half hour that she was to spend out in the countryside after four whole years.

A gust of wind whisked a plastic bag from the pile on which it was placed and dragged it across the cement floor. That was the only thing moving. There was no one at the petrol station, at least there didn’t seem to be. The gleaming red pumps appeared to have just been placed there, waiting for the first car to arrive. The office door was closed.

The wind carried off two more plastic bags, in the same direction as the first. A moment later, when the noise of the bags brushing against the ground became imperceptible, and silence fell again, the loudspeakers in the roof of the petrol station — she hadn’t noticed them until then — began broadcasting the sounds of a choir that mingled human voices with the howls of a dog.

She stopped short. She knew that opening. It belonged to a song that Antonia often used to play on the cassette-player they had in their cell. Yes, the chorus of voices and howling would be followed by an acoustic guitar, and the guitar by the words of a singer talking about a dream he’d had, a lovely dream that turned out to be nothing but a false alarm.

At last, the words she was waiting for emerged from the loudspeaker:

Last night I dreamt

that somebody loved me;

no hope, but no harm,

just another false alarm.

Was it possible to live without love? Was it bearable to live night after night with no one to put your arms around? What did you do when there were no friends to be found anywhere? The questions arose in her mind one after the other and she clung to them, feeling slightly embarrassed, because that world, the world of songs and sentimental lyrics, was not her world, or at least it hadn’t been until she went into prison.

A man in blue overalls came out from behind one of the pumps and forced her to interrupt her thoughts.

“What are you doing standing there?” he shouted. He was carrying an iron bar in one hand.

“Don’t get jumpy, I’m not planning a hold-up,” she replied, in a firm voice. Then she walked past him and over to the grassy mound.

“Where do you think you’re going? That area is the property of the petrol station. We have orders to keep it clean,” said the man.

“Oh, fuck off,” she replied without turning round.

She put everything she was carrying down on the grass, the book by Emily Dickinson and the bag containing the sandwiches and the beers; then she bent her knees and sat down as she used to during the breaks in the yoga classes that she had attended in prison. Before her, at the far edge of a yellowish plain, there were two trees that must have been extremely tall and strong, but seen from there, seemed as slender as spiders’ legs. To the right of those trees, near the horizon, the sky was pale blue; to the left, it was dark blue. The sun was just above the trees, but quite high above the horizon, just where the two blues of the sky joined.

She felt a cool breeze on her face. “Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me,” the wind was saying at that moment. “No hope, but no harm, just another false alarm,” she added mentally when the wind dropped and fell silent.

She thought about the song again and about the questions that it had suggested to her a moment before. No, you couldn’t live without love, just as spiders — the little reddish spiders in prison, for example — could not move through the air without first spinning a thread. Sometimes, because the thread was invisible, it seemed that they could, but that was just an illusion. The thread was necessary, love was necessary. The problem was its fragility. The thread could be broken as easily as, one way or another, could love. If they hadn’t killed Larrea …

“Don’t think about it!” she suddenly exclaimed, thumping her own head. She had to drive out such ideas. She had to get a grip on herself. After all that time, thinking about Larrea was pointless.

She closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply. The sun touched her right cheek, and at first she tried to concentrate on that feeling of warmth. However, as if her mind couldn’t settle there, her thoughts drifted off to the cat that had come to meet her as she got off the bus. What colour was its head? Black? Yes, black. And its back? Did it have a black back too? Yes, it did, she was sure it did. And what about its front? No, its front wasn’t black, it was white. And its tail? She couldn’t remember anything about its tail, or rather, she remembered that there was a scar right at the base.

She heard a noise, like someone fumbling with a plastic bag, and she opened her eyes. The cat that she had been thinking about was only a yard away from her and was trying to take the sandwiches out of the bag.

“What are you doing here!” she shouted, startled by its sudden appearance. The cat took fright and left the bag alone. “It’s like magic!” she said. That unexpected coincidence amused her.

The cat sat down about two yards away, its eyes fixed on the bag.

“Which do you prefer, cheese or salad?” she asked, in a softer tone of voice. She broke off a piece of cheese and put it down on the grass. The cat snapped it up.

“Do you like beer?” she asked it a little later, when the sandwiches were eaten. Ignoring the can of Heineken she offered it, the cat walked over to the other side of the hill and sat gazing at the horizon. The sky was still divided into two different blues, but on the frontier between them, above the tall trees, you could see a line of flat clouds. With a little imagination, you could think of them as flying saucers taking off towards the sun.

She put down the can of beer and opened the book of poems by Emily Dickinson. She wanted to find a favourite of hers, a poem about grass. She had promised herself that the very first opportunity she had to sit down on some grass after leaving prison, she would read the poem out loud.

She found it at once, and started reading it slowly, pronouncing each word like a little girl, or like a sleepwalker. The alcohol in the beer that she had drunk helped her shrug off the embarrassment she still felt whenever she read anything out aloud, even when she was alone.

The Grass so little has to do –

A Sphere of simple Green –

With only Butterflies to brood

And Bees to entertain –

And stir all day to pretty Tunes

The Breezes fetch along –

And hold the Sunshine in its lap

And bow to everything –

And thread the Dews, all night, like Pearls –

And make itself so fine

A Duchess were too common

For such a noticing –

And even when it dies — to pass

In Odors so divine –

Like Lowly spices, lain to sleep –

Or Spikenards, perishing –

And then, in Sovereign Barns to dwell –

And dream the Days away,

The Grass so little has to do

I wish I were a Hay –

From the loudspeakers in the petrol station came the strains of a march and she walked back to the motel in time to the music. That rest had put her in a good mood.

Instead of going directly back to the bus — there were still five minutes before they had to leave — she went into the supermarket and bought whatever she fancied from the shelves, two Crunchies, a small bottle of moisturiser, a fashion magazine, a magazine about the occult and three newspapers. They were the first things she had bought in a long time, her first real purchases, quite different from buying things at the prison store. She had the feeling that she was gradually changing worlds and becoming integrated into reality again.

“Stop trying to be perfect!” she read on the way out, while she was waiting for the checkout girl to finish dealing with another customer. The words appeared on the cover of a fashion magazine. “Are you obsessively tidy? Are you just about to put all your CDs in alphabetical order? Don’t waste your time and energy trying to control this chaotic world of ours. You’ll be a happier person for it.”

She pulled a face. She hated such fatuous things. No, it wasn’t going to be that easy to adapt to reality.

“You’ve got the right change in your hand,” the checkout girl was saying.

“So I have!” sighed the customer ahead of her. It was the large woman who had greeted her in the cafeteria, her travelling companion. “I never used to be this stupid, but ever since my health began to fail, I can’t seem to get anything right. Do forgive me.”

“Perhaps you need glasses,” said the checkout girl.

“No, no, it’s not a question of eyesight. It’s something much more serious than that. Although, in fact, lately, I’ve been feeling really well,” replied the large woman. Then she turned to her. “What about you? How do you feel after having a cigarette?”

“Pretty good,” she said, barely looking up from the magazine. She didn’t want to encourage her to go on talking. As soon as she dropped her guard, the woman would regale her with the whole story of her illness in all its details.

“We’re alike, you and I,” the large woman went on, stopping at the other side of the checkout. “I like to be alone too. I’d much rather be on my own than put up with all the usual disappointments other people seem to suffer.”

“I left my seat because I wanted to smoke. It wasn’t so that I could be alone,” she said, after paying for her purchases.

“I didn’t mean that. I meant because I saw you sitting on the grass,” said the large woman when they went outside. “Not that I was spying on you. It’s just that I had the same idea and I was about to go over when I saw you there. Didn’t you have a cat with you too?”

“The cat did follow me, yes.”

“For a moment, I thought I’d join you, but you looked so absorbed that I thought it best to leave you alone. You were reading a book, weren’t you?”

“Thanks for being so considerate. Not everyone would have been so kind,” she said, paying no attention to the last question. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the toilet.”

“I’ll wait for you here. If they don’t see anyone waiting outside, they might leave without you.”

When she came back, most of the other passengers were already on the bus, but there was still a queue to get on.

“You were quick! You hardly took any time at all. You’re obviously very fit,” said the large woman.

“I didn’t have far to go,” she replied, smiling. Then she stood behind the woman and opened the magazine.

“Four ways of increasing your sexual confidence,” she read. “First, take risks. Feeling comfortable about some new sexual technique is like diving into the water, says Dr Valle. You have to take a leap. If your fear seems insurmountable, take it one step at a time. That was how a woman having problems with oral sex solved the problem. She started with little kisses and, in the end, she found it all perfectly natural.”

“Have you got your ticket?”

The new hostess, a young blonde, was addressing the large woman.

“I suppose so, but I don’t know where it is,” replied the woman. She seemed flustered.

“Her seat’s next to mine. It’s number thirty-one,” she said to the hostess, showing her ticket.

“OK,” said the hostess. She didn’t seem as severe as the previous one.

“Thanks very much,” said the large woman to the hostess. Then she looked at her. “And thanks for your help. Are you staying downstairs in the smokers’ section?”

“There’s nothing I love more than a smoke. You know what these vices are like.”

The large woman smiled understandingly and disappeared up the stairs.

“Can you bring me a coffee once we set off?” she said to the hostess.

“Of course. Are you staying down here?”

She nodded and sat down in the same place as before. She put the magazine on the table and went on reading.

“You need to be positive about your fantasies, says Dr Valle. In other words, if you dream about Harrison Ford, don’t imagine him casting a critical eye over your thighs. Don’t feel guilty. We women often fall into that trap. If you get excited thinking about a particular actor, don’t imagine you’re deceiving your husband. If it makes you feel any better, just remember that he might well be fantasizing about Sharon Stone.”

She glanced at her watch and then outside. It was seven in the evening and the sun was nearing the horizon. The spaceship clouds were tinged with gold underneath. The rest of the sky was blue. Pale blue or dark blue.

“Do it over the phone. Sexy phone calls from one office to another can be very exciting. Just make sure the boss isn’t listening in!”

“We’re off!” said the driver, turning on the engine. He too seemed nicer than the previous one.

The bus crossed the lorry park and headed swiftly for the motorway, impatient to get up speed. Without raising her eyes from the magazine, she took out a cigarette and put it to her lips.

“You smoke too much. Every time I see you you’re just getting out another cigarette,” said someone beside her. Before she had time to react, a lit match was being held about six inches from her face.

It was the man in the brown suit and the red tie, the same one who had approached her at the railway station in Barcelona. She put the cigarette down on the table and turned towards the window.

“We’re making progress. Last time you knocked it out of my hand,” said the man, putting the match in the ashtray and sitting down opposite her. He smiled broadly and held out his hand. “My name’s Enrique. What’s yours?”

She said nothing, watching the red car at that moment overtaking the bus.

The mind of an ex-prisoner

Always returns to prison.

In the street, he passes judges, prosecutors and lawyers,

and the police, though they don’t know him,

look at him more than at anyone else,

because his step is not calm or assured,

because his step is far too assured.

Inside him lives

a man condemned for life.

The bus was travelling at about eighty or ninety miles an hour now and heading for the orange lights that flanked the motorway, disappearing off into the horizon. She looked first at those lights and then at the sky. The clouds in the shape of spaceships were becoming tinged with pink and the sun was like a brass coin. The rest was blue, the blue of stained glass, simultaneously dark and brilliant.

“Who buys you those red ties?” she asked the man. He had withdrawn his hand, but he was still smiling.

“I pay for them myself, of course,” replied the man calmly. He wasn’t looking at her, but at one of the magazines on the table. “‘Stephanie of Monaco celebrates her thirtieth birthday’,” he read out loud. “How time flies! I didn’t think she was that old! But then,” his smile grew broader and he looked across at her, “she keeps in good shape. Probably all that weight training she does.”

“Wearing a red tie doesn’t change anything. You can’t disguise the smell,” she said. She picked up the Crunchie bar from the table and removed the wrapping.

“What do you mean? That I’m a policeman?” he said, suddenly serious, ignoring the fact that she had addressed him as “tú”.

The new hostess on the bus came over to them with a tray.

“Excuse me, was it you who asked for a coffee?”

“Yes it was, thanks,” she said. She picked up the cup from the tray and placed it on the table.

“Can you bring me one too? Black, no sugar,” said the man, smiling again. He could open or close that smile with the precision of an expert accordionist.

The orange lights flanking the motorway could be seen clearly now. They lit up a large industrial area, and the brightest of the lights marked the tops of factory chimneys. A little further on, the lights of Zaragoza were turning part of the sky red and, from the bus, you could see a single star, the evening star, Venus.

O Venus, evening star, you bring together everything

that the magnificent Dawn will scatter;

you bring the sheep, you bring the goat,

you bring the shepherd boy back to his mother’s side.

The hostess returned with the second cup of coffee. The man thanked her and asked her how much he owed her for the two coffees.

“I don’t want you to pay for me,” she said, putting her hand in her jacket pocket. “I’ll pay for myself,” she added, addressing the hostess.

“What shall I do?” said the hostess.

“Let her pay!” shouted one of the passengers who had just come down the stairs, in a tone of voice that was intended to be jocular. It was the passenger who looked like a boxer, the one who had been talking to the other hostess.

“All right,” said the man with the red tie, placing his money alongside hers. Then he took a sip of coffee and in a low voice he repeated the question that he had asked a few moments before. “Is that what you think, then, that I’m a policeman?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” she replied. She took a sip of coffee and then a bite of chocolate.

“What I’m going to say will sound strange to you, but I’m going to say it anyway. I’m here to help you. As a friend.”

It seemed as if he were going to go on talking, but instead he stopped. Outside the window, the lights of Zaragoza — the lights of the houses, the lights on the aerials — formed a wall here, a wood there, further off a blotch of yellow. The bus slid along giving her a feeling of weightlessness, as if she were flying.

“You can say what you like, but I’m sure you’re a policeman. And you may not be the only one on this bus,” she said, glancing at the man who looked like a boxer. She was speaking in a tone of utter indifference, as if her only concern was to avoid getting chocolate on her fingers.

The video screen filled with coloured stripes. The second film of the journey was about to start. Behind the screen, to the right of the driver’s compartment, a digital clock said it was twelve minutes past seven. Darkness began to fill the inside of the bus.

“Let me finish, please,” said the man in the red tie, holding his cup of coffee with two hands. “I said that I come as a friend, and to prove that, I’m going to tell you the truth. I am a policeman, well, not a policeman exactly, but I work very closely with the police. As you know, the organization of which, until recently, you were a member is at war with the State, and people participate in that war at many different levels. What do you think? Is that a subject that interests you?”

Outside, Zaragoza looked like a city divided in two. One of them was ordinary enough, a mere accumulation of buildings and lights, the other — with its cupolas and towers that seemed etched in Indian ink on the remaining blue of the sky — had an oriental air about it that made her dream fleetingly of a journey to far-off lands. When she was able to, when she could free herself from her persecutors.

The video was just beginning. The screen showed a military parade. The people watching looked like Latin Americans.

“Don’t I even merit a response? I’ve been perfectly frank with you,” said the man.

“Finish your coffee and get out of here. If you don’t, I will,” she replied, screwing up the wrapping from her chocolate bar and stuffing it in the plastic cup.

“Fine. This is just a first contact, and I won’t insist. But I’d like to say something, as a friend, as a true friend. Times have changed, Irene, times have changed a lot.”

A shiver ran down her spine and she turned brusquely back to the window.

Goodnight Irene, Irene goodnight,

Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene,

I’ll see you in my dreams.

She knew the song from the tape that Margarita and Antonia had given her for her birthday, and she had the words copied out in one of her notebooks, possibly in several. She liked it, she loved to listen to her own name being sung to her before she went to sleep, and she loved the way the singer said her name, because it removed her from daily reality and transported her to other places, sometimes to Texas or Montana, at others to the streets of her childhood or to unfamiliar regions that she couldn’t quite define. But, suddenly, on that bus, her name emerged from the mouth of a policeman.

Margarita was right, she thought. Losers lose everything. She couldn’t even protect her name.

“You look sad suddenly,” remarked the man with the red tie. “What are you thinking about?”

“About my name,” she said. She picked up the cigarette she’d put down on the table and lit it with her lighter.

“It’s a very pretty name. I like it. I mean it, Irene.”

“I do too normally.”

On the screen, three boys were holding up a taxi at gunpoint and one of them, an extremely skinny youth, was forcing the driver to lie down in the back seat of the car. In the following scene, the shots of a military parade shown at the beginning were repeated, this time showing close-ups of the military and civil authorities presiding over it. All of them — the military, the civilians and the boys who had held up the taxi — looked villainous.

“Don’t be frightened, Irene. I’ve already said that I come as a friend. You can trust me. I won’t just dump you like your former colleagues.”

The man was looking at her over his plastic cup. He had beautiful grey eyes.

“Are you going or not?” she said, putting the books that were still on the table back in her suitcase.

“Don’t worry, I’ll go as soon as I’ve finished my coffee,” said the man with a sigh. “But, to be frank, Irene, you’re behaving like an adolescent. I’ve been examining your case and I know you’ve got problems. You find it hard to accept reality, boring everyday reality, and, on the one hand, that’s good. For many years I felt the same, I even joined a Maoist group, but after a certain age, you can’t go on behaving like that. How can I put it? It’s fine being childish when you’re a child, even at twenty or twenty-two, being a gullible fool is understandable, but at thirty-four …”

“You may have spent a couple of hours studying my file, but you’ve got a few of your facts wrong. I’m thirty-seven.” She paused and put out her cigarette. She didn’t feel like smoking.

“Well, you look much younger I must say,” said the man in the red tie, opening his smile and immediately closing it again.

“You shouldn’t go meddling in other people’s lives without their permission,” she said with a scornful gesture. “Only a pig would spend his life doing that.”

“You’re right, we are obliged to do some terrible things in our job,” he replied, adopting a melancholy tone. “That’s the old argument, isn’t it? Does a good end justify the means? I don’t honestly know. On the one hand …”

“Look, your philosophy of life doesn’t interest me in the least,” she broke in, putting on her headphones.

On screen, an exhausted-looking man wearing a loose white shirt was saying: “My son wasn’t a terrorist. He was a good student. They laid a trap for him, I’m sure of it.” He was talking to a very beautiful woman, and on the cane table between them lay a newspaper with a photo of two corpses lying in the gutter. “Two terrorists dead, one seriously injured,” said the headline.

She looked away from the screen and looked instead at the fields near the motorway. Here and there, as if born by some miracle out of the parched earth, there were flowering trees in groups of twenty or in lines of five, or two by two, or all alone, in the most unexpected places. Taking the scene as a whole — this was an idea she had after the bus had travelled on for a few miles — what you saw out of the window was like an emigration of trees, an exodus, the long march of trees towards their destiny. They seemed to be travelling west, towards the part of the sky that was still blue. Were they guided by a star? Was Venus guiding them? No, there was no guide. No possibility of flight. The trees could not move.

“I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to find out what happened to your son,” the woman journalist on the screen was saying to the man in the white shirt. “But, first, I’d like you to take a look at these photos that I found in the newspaper archives. Do you know these men?”

The man looked closely at them.

“I know him very well,” he said, pointing at one of the photos. “He’s one of my son’s friends at university. But I don’t know this other man. I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?”

“Well, he’s the only one who survived that so-called shootout with the police.”

“Your newspaper says that he’s seriously injured.”

“But I don’t believe it myself. The editor is a bit nervous about it all, and he’s simply accepted the official version. If he’d analysed …”

The journalist’s words on the screen were cut off. The man in the red tie had just removed her headphones and was holding them in one hand, whilst with the other — the open palm towards her as if to say “Stop” — he was signalling to her not to get angry.

“I’m sorry, Irene, but you must listen to me. I mean it. We could be friends.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, snatching the headphones from him. The violence of that gesture attracted the attention of the hostess and the passenger who looked like a boxer.

“I can understand your being angry with me, Irene. In other circumstances, I would have behaved more politely and tried not to alarm you. But, please, just give me a few moments, the time it takes to smoke another cigarette. I can’t go back to my seat without having told you what I came to tell you. Will you allow me that time? Just until you’ve smoked one more cigarette.”

The man’s grey eyes were looking at her hard. She picked up the packet and took out a cigarette.

“All right. That sounds like a reasonable deal — assuming you keep your word,” she said, lighting the cigarette.

She felt tired, tired and anxious about something that she could feel like a wound inside her. She wasn’t doing very well; the policeman was gaining the upper hand.

“May I take one?” said the man, pointing to the cigarettes. “I’ve never tried that brand.”

No, the policeman didn’t need any grand theory about the soul, nor any in-depth analysis of why people act in a certain way. He just needed to know three or four things, obvious things like the fact that a person who has spent four years within the four walls of a prison emerges into the world debilitated and with a great hunger for affection, ready to accept the smallest sign of love, however wretched or obscure. That was exactly what was happening to her: contrary to what her mind was telling her, she was still sitting there listening to the policeman in the red tie or, rather, the policeman with the grey eyes, a man who, she had to admit, did strike her as extremely handsome. In that sense, she was reacting to the signal, and the message — like poison in her guts — was gradually leaching into her soul.

“Look, Irene, I’m going to put things quite bluntly, as a friend, but bluntly,” said the man, putting his cigarette down in the ashtray on the table and leaning towards her. His tone of voice was one that called for greater privacy, for more intimate lighting than there was at that moment on the bus. “Your situation looks very bad, Irene. On the one hand, you have no work. On the other, you’ve become marginalized from the organization by rejecting the party line and asking to leave prison. Lastly, Irene, how can I put it … you’re still a pretty woman and you still look quite young, but you’re getting on a bit. A while ago, you told me you were thirty-seven, and nowadays, well, you know how it is, men prefer young girls, adolescents, and unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, they get them too; it’s really not that hard these days to get an adolescent girl into bed you know.”

“Really?” she said, raising her cigarette to her lips.

“No, Irene, it isn’t, and that’s the fact of the matter. However regrettable it may be, you have to accept it.”

She smiled broadly. The man in the red tie’s clumsy efforts to convince her had just become painfully obvious. He wasn’t the worldly-wise man he seemed. Like a lot of policemen born in remote villages and with an education that almost always began in a seminary, his Catholic upbringing had made a profound impression on his personality. They all had a Virgin Mary in some corner of their heart.

“I have no problem with the facts. It’s up to the individual who they have relationships with. That’s what your mother did, after all.”

For the first time since the conversation had begun, she had found a weak point. The man in the red tie hesitated. He didn’t know how to go on.

“It’s true,” he admitted at last, picking up the cigarette that was burning out on the ashtray on the table. “There is a great deal of sexual freedom nowadays, but …”

He left the phrase hanging and moved his face towards hers, at the same time mischievously opening his smile. Did he know about her sexual encounter of the night before? If they had been following her since she left prison, they would.

“… but that freedom,” the man went on, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, “is only one-way, Irene. You see a lot of older men with young girls of eighteen, but you don’t see any women of a certain age with eighteen-year-old boys. That’s how things are, Irene.”

“That’s how you choose to see it.”

“Your situation, Irene, does not look good,” said the man, taking no notice of her comment. He didn’t want to go down that particular road. “One danger you may well have to face is loneliness. You’re not going to tell me that, what with problems finding work, problems with relationships, you’re not going to end up back in your old haunts, in your old political world … You’ll find out for yourself, of course, but it doesn’t seem like much of a life to me, at least, not what you could call a life. And that’s something which, and again, forgive me being so frank, will be of the utmost importance to you after the years you’ve lost. I think you need new friends and I could be one of them, why not? I can’t guarantee I can solve all your problems, but …”

She looked away from the grey eyes and up at the video screen. A dog fight was in progress. The journalist, who seemed to be the heroine, was questioning the people at the fight, showing them the photo she had in her hand. Then the camera cut to a very thin young man, with a mean expression on his face, who was watching the woman.

“That’s the one who betrayed the other two. He was the traitor of the group and it was all a lie that story about him being wounded,” said the man, turning his head to the screen. “I saw the film once in a bar.”

“Well, I haven’t seen it before. That’s why I’d like to see it now,” she said, picking up the headphones. She had nearly finished her cigarette.

“On second thoughts, perhaps you should see it. After all, you’re a traitor too.”

For a moment she couldn’t speak.

“And you’re a complete and utter shit,” she said, leaning back.

“I’m sorry, Irene. I didn’t mean to say that,” said the man. As if instinctively, he held out his hand to her.

“I’ve finished my cigarette. Please go.”

She stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, so hard that the grains from the carbon filter stained her fingers.

“You can wipe your fingers on this,” said the man, offering her a paper serviette.

“Aren’t you going to keep your promise?”

She felt weak, as if the word — that dirty, wretched word — which, moments before, had come from her companion’s mouth, had left her breathless.

“No, I’m not. I can’t now. It would be a mistake,” said the man fiercely. There was a metallic glint in the depths of his grey eyes. “I don’t think you’re a traitor. Not at all. It’s your former admirers who think that, the many admirers you had before, because an admirer can never allow his idol to change. How many fans would Elvis Presley have now if he was still alive and living the life of a sensible family man? Very few, Irene, very few. Instead, he became a monster and died very young, and so his admirers go in their thousands to visit his grave. And the same thing would happen with you. Because, the fact is, and again forgive my frankness, Irene, your organization is basically a youthful phenomenon, it’s not a serious political movement …”

“Please, be quiet! You’re giving me a headache!” she broke in, clasping her head between her two hands.

“Then I’ll explain it to you very briefly. I want us to be friends — both on a personal level and in my capacity as a policeman. All I want is for you to see our point of view. If we don’t reach an agreement, fine, nothing more will be said. But, Irene, you must bear in mind …”

“Please, leave me alone!”

She clasped her head again. She felt a stab of pain in one temple.

“I’ll talk to you quietly, but I won’t be silent. Things are looking bad for you, Irene, and I can help you …”

He didn’t manage to finish his sentence that time either. A shout stopped him:

“For heaven’s sake, I can’t bear it a moment longer!”

Everyone on the lower deck stared in amazement at the nun with green eyes. She had got up out of her seat and was looking very annoyed.

“What kind of a policeman are you? I can’t believe what I’ve been hearing! Why don’t you just leave the young woman in peace! What right have you to pester her?”

She was standing right next to the man with the red tie now, but she was still shouting just as loudly.

“Leave me alone, nobody asked you for your opinion!” said the man. He seemed embarrassed and kept glancing over at the hostess and the passenger who looked like a boxer.

“It’s no good pulling faces, sir! And look at me when I’m talking to you!”

“You’ll be sorry for this!”

“You certainly will!”

“Oh, really,” said the man mockingly, but he was clearly intimidated.

The other nun, who was still in her seat, suddenly turned round, her face tense.

“Her brother is a general, a general, do you hear? An important general in the army!” she shrilled in her old lady’s voice.

“I really don’t give a shit who he is!” said the man, again glancing at the hostess and the passenger who looked like a boxer, but neither of them made a move to intervene.

“You’re a fool, you don’t know what you’re saying,” said the nun with green eyes. “But now, be a good Christian and leave this woman in peace. As for you, Irene, and forgive me being so direct, why don’t you go back upstairs? You’ll be better off up there. This man has no honour. He’s a serpent.”

“Good advice,” Irene said. She got up from her seat and started putting everything that was on the table back into her suitcase. Suddenly, she burst out laughing. The whole situation was a joke. It seemed totally absurd that a person like her should be rescued by two nuns, two members of the Spanish church. Except that, for once, absurdity was on her side.

“You’ll be better off upstairs,” said the nun with the green eyes as Irene put the last book in her suitcase and left the smokers’ section. The man in the red tie was sitting with arms folded, staring hard at some point on the carpet.

“Give my regards to your brother the general,” Irene said.

“I will.”

She felt light. The sense she had had a few moments before — that the poison was seeping into her soul, that she was losing ground to the policeman — had vanished completely. The nun’s intervention had broken the spell, and she could no longer hear the serpent’s whispers.

She walked past the hostess and the passenger who looked like a boxer and started going up the stairs, slowly, trying to keep her balance despite the swaying of the bus. She was just about to put her foot on the fifth step when she felt the presence of someone behind her.

“You filthy whore! Just you wait!” said a hoarse voice behind her.

She instinctively jumped onto the next step and reached the upper deck before she had even realized what had happened. It did not take long. It was not the voice of the policeman in the red tie. He wasn’t the one who had threatened her. It had been the other one, the passenger who looked like a boxer. She hesitated for a few moments, as if she couldn’t quite remember what she had to do, but in the end she started looking for her seat. Was it number thirty-two? She put her hand in her jacket pocket and took out the ticket. Yes, number thirty-two. It was right there, beside the stairs.

The upper deck was in near darkness. It looked like a cinema. Most of the passengers were watching the video.

“I got tired of being downstairs,” she said to the large woman by way of greeting. She got no reply. Despite her half-open eyes and the position of her head, erect and looking at one of the screens, she was fast asleep. Irene leaned her suitcase against the seat and sat down carefully so as not to wake her. She felt incapable of talking to anyone.

“Filthy whore!” she heard as soon as she closed her eyes. But this time it was her memory repeating it back to her. Something crumpled inside her, and her head filled with questions, memories, fragments of poems; questions, memories and fragments of poems that were like specks of dust, like foreign bodies floating in the air. Was there no way out? Was there no lasting happiness? Was there no rest? Was there no final link in the chain? After Larrea’s death, was everything hopeless? Was the poem right?

You stood and looked up at the sky and said:

If I had wings, I too would fly away

in search of other lands, I too would strike camp

on a coast planted with yellow banners;

so that time could better do its work,

so that I could forget more quickly

the walls and the people of this city.

“If I had”, “I would fly away”, “I would strike camp”, the hypothetical forms of the verb. The make-up with which language disguises the impossible. No, there was no way out, no hiding place.

She raised her head from the back of the seat and looked out of the window. Out there, the sky was dark blue, almost black; nevertheless, in the spot where the sun had just set there was a slash of green that looked like the sea and in which the clouds formed yellow islands, red harbours, white boats. She remembered the song they used to sing at school after trips to the coast:

Ixil ixilik dago kaian barrenean

ontzi txuri polit bat uraren gainean.

Eta zergatik, zergatik, zergatik

Zergatik negar egin,

zeruan izarra dago itsaso aldetik.

(The pretty white boat is in the harbour.

The pretty white boat is on the sea.

I don’t … I don’t want to cry.

Over the sea there’s a star in the sky.)

Above the green sea that she could see from the window there was a star, Venus, the one that collected up everything that had been scattered during the day and returned it home. She would have liked the star to do the same for her, to pick up all the fragments of her life, scattered here and there, and place them in an orderly fashion inside her, like clothes on the shelves of a wardrobe. But no star could do that.

The large woman gave a snort. When she looked at her closely, she realized that she was wearing a wig, slightly askew. It revealed the side of her head, which was completely bald.

As if she had noticed that someone was looking at her, the large woman changed position.

“Filthy whore!” she heard again. She wanted to forget about the incident on the stairs, but she couldn’t.

There were some headphones on the large woman’s lap. She picked them up and put them on. The screen that corresponded to her area of the bus was quite close, and she could see it easily.

“Why do you get into these messes?” the newspaper editor was saying to the beautiful journalist involved in investigating the deaths of the students. The editor was wearing braces and was sweating heavily. The woman was wearing a very elegant white dress.

“And what about you? Why do you get yourself into these messes?” replied the journalist in an aggressive tone.

“I don’t know what you mean, Miriam.”

“It’s so obvious, Jack. You’ve done everything you can to put me off the track, and that can only mean that you’re implicated too.”

“What do you mean, Miriam? You know perfectly well what my position on the matter is. I’ve always fought for a decent democracy in Puerto Rico! I’m still fighting for it.”

“Really? How exactly? By setting a deadly trap for two students?”

“Miriam, please! Think what you’re saying!”

The beautiful journalist opened her handbag and took out a photograph.

“Look at this, Jack,” she said to the editor, showing it to him. “They make an odd assortment, don’t you think? The one on the left is Cisneros, the most anti-nationalist politician in Puerto Rico. And the other one, in the second row, is Taylor, the FBI man who was sent here by Washington last year.”

“Come on, Miriam, don’t be so suspicious. They probably just happened to coincide at the same official dinner.”

“Exactly, Jack. It was an official dinner. The one that our newspaper organized a month ago.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“I think it has. Look who’s wearing a waiter’s uniform. Don’t you recognize him? Don’t you recognize that skinny boy? He’s a bit far from the camera, but even so there’s no mistaking him.”

“Who is he? I don’t know him.”

“He’s the third man, Jack, the third member of the group who supposedly tried to break up the military parade. He’s the traitor, Jack, the one who betrayed the other two.”

“He wasn’t a traitor, he was an infiltrator working with the police,” Irene said, removing the headphones and almost addressing the screen out loud. Then she closed her eyes and sighed. How many more times would she have to stumble over that word? How many more times would someone speak to her of betrayal before the day was over? Yes, Margarita was right. According to her, problems, especially if they were serious ones, acted like malignant magnets that attracted all kinds of painful particles:

“Say some man has left you. You turn on the radio and all the songs are about lost loves and how sad it is to lose a lover. Say you’ve got to have an operation. You open a newspaper and the first thing you see is an article all about the dangers of anaesthetics. Basically, life stinks.”

She didn’t feel inferior to anyone, on the contrary. She saw herself — she had said as much to Antonia and Margarita during some of their talks — as a person who had taken decisions, nine or ten important decisions in the space of about twenty years, and that record, regardless of whether the decisions were right or wrong, was, in her opinion, an achievement, because it was the opposite of what mediocrities do, people who just let themselves drift, never deciding anything, just going where the current takes them, whichever current happens along. Nevertheless, words like “betrayal” intimidated her and made her doubt herself. Not because there was necessarily any truth in them — in that respect, her conscience was clear — but because they were essentially grubby words, words that always left a stain, even when they emerged a penny a dozen from the lips of a complete and utter bastard or were written by the hand of a fool. The policeman with the red tie had called her a “traitor”. Many others would do the same. On the walls of Bilbao, some adolescent would doubtless put the accusation in writing.

She remembered a letter that she had read months before in the newspaper. In it, a militant who had opted for the same path she was taking pleaded for respect and published his own past record for the benefit of those who despised what he had done, his so-called “repentance”, setting out everything that he had gone through in his fight for an ideal. A letter written in vain? She thought so. As individuals, people weren’t bad, but in a group, in the safety of anonymity, people became monsters. Could you expect compassion from a monster? Only in stories — fairy stories.

She sighed again. She didn’t want to dwell on the subject any longer, not until more time had passed. Besides, she had quite enough to deal with on the bus, with the two policemen. Would they approach her again? Would they just give up for the present? She mustn’t think about it. It was best to pass the time watching the film.

On the screen, the infiltrator who had pushed the two university students to their deaths was smiling at the journalist.

“You’re very beautiful. I’d like to be your friend. I’m nicer than I seem,” he said.

“I want to know exactly who you’re working for,” replied the journalist very gravely.

Suddenly, she remembered that there were other channels, apart from the one connected to the video, and she twiddled the knob on the arm of her seat. The dialogue between the infiltrator and the journalist broke off and was replaced by flute music. It wasn’t any ordinary flute, it had the deep tones of a harmonium. The musician — she imagined him as a shepherd playing in some new Arcadia — lengthened out each note and the melody came and went, as if forming waves, ever slower, ever deeper.

She looked at the large woman. She was still in the same position, her head erect and her mouth half-open.

“I wonder if she’s dead,” she thought. Just at that moment, the woman muttered something and shifted in her seat.

She felt tired again. The tension of her encounter with the two policemen had drained her of energy. Or was it the flute? She had the sense that the sound reaching her through the headphones was gradually emptying her of feelings.

She looked out of the window. Outside, everything was in darkness, and all she could see were the lights of the cars coming in the opposite direction and what they illuminated. She screwed up her eyes to see better, but she still couldn’t really see anything clearly. And Venus? Was it still in the sky? She wanted to look up, but she couldn’t. Her eyelids were growing heavy. Shortly afterwards, she fell asleep and began to dream.