Learning to Lose (30 page)

Lorenzo waited one day near the office, and when he saw Santiago emerge from the building he confronted him. Do you want to talk? Let’s have a cup of coffee. Santiago’s civilized air only riled him up more. Lorenzo gave him a shove, which he received without response, holding on to the wall. He said something else. Something conciliatory. Lorenzo shouted at him. Why are you doing this to me? Huh? Why are you doing this to me? Santiago reflexively covered his face with his hands. What do you think, I’m going to hit you? Lorenzo recriminated. And he angrily slapped Santiago’s arms as if he just wanted to make
him feel inferior. It sent his brown plastic-framed glasses to the ground, almost by accident. They didn’t break. Someone passing by on the street stopped to look. Santiago picked up his glasses, put them on, and started to walk away, with firm steps but not running. Lorenzo didn’t follow him. He only repeated, I’m not going to hit you. But Santiago didn’t turn around to look at him, he was far away.

Lorenzo never understood what he had wanted to do, what he was looking for in that confrontation. He was only trying to force Santiago to notice the injury he had caused him. You are happy at my expense, because you stole everything from me. In time he was ashamed of his violence, his stupidity. It humiliated him. Santiago had to know the cost of his happiness, the price the other man had to pay. Lorenzo wanted to present himself to Santiago as something more than just Pilar’s ex, as a real, wounded person.

But his discomfort that Sunday as he eats with his parents doesn’t date back that far. It has more to do with the previous afternoon.

On the esplanade of the monastery at El Escorial, surrounded by groups of tourists on their way back to buses parked nearby, Lorenzo asked Daniela, did you like it? She confessed to mostly being impressed by how enormous and old it was.

Spaniards are crazy, right? Lorenzo thought to say. Something like this erected in the middle of nowhere just because some demented king wanted to purge his guilt.

He told Daniela about the origins of the monastery, Saint Lorenzo’s martyrdom, the very building being shaped as a torture grill, Philip II’s shame for winning the Battle of San Quintín on the saint’s day, all Internet facts he had read hastily on Sylvia’s computer.

Daniela told him she had felt the same feeling of smallness on a school trip to visit the Church of the Company of Jesus in Quito, in the middle of the city’s historic center. The effect on her of the sun coming through the windows and the very explicit paintings depicting the fate of the infidels, which convinced the natives of the greatness of the Catholic God. Then she went back to visit after the fire, with the blackened walls, and it was even more impressive.

Lorenzo made general comments, mixing up dates and names, in some sort of well-intentioned speech that seemed more like a presentation by a flunking student. When he tried to say something about the Spanish arrival in Ecuador and the missionary spirit that erected enormous churches and convents, Daniela corrected him with a certain sweetness, Hernán Cortés didn’t have anything to do with any of that, I think you mean Pizarro. Yes, of course, Pizarro, well, it’s the same thing. He also pretended to know the names of Sucre, and the date of independence declared on the slopes of the Pichincha volcano. He even straight-out lied, insisting that of course he had heard of Rumiñahui. A long time ago, in school.

He wasn’t able to answer all her questions as they toured the site. Well, I think the king married several times, I don’t know if it was three or four, he said in front of the sepulchers. Yes, of course he was very religious, look at the tiny bed he slept in. Once in a while, he managed to read the caption beside a painting before she did and then he would show off, this is his father, Charles V. But it was the Spanish entrepreneurial spirit, their enlightened madness, that Lorenzo highlighted in his aimless lecture, as if he wanted, in Daniela’s eyes, to draw a parallel between him and those cruel but magnetic men filled with fruitful projects. And boy were they fruitful, Francisco de Aguirre had
up to fifty children, she said, with an irony Lorenzo didn’t quite get. The monastery soon closed its doors and they were pushed to the library. Lorenzo was pointing out, not quite accurately, Ecuador on an old globe when the beadle urged them to leave. That’s so typical of functionaries, look at this schedule. How can they close such a popular monument at six in the evening, something that’s a national point of pride?

They sat on the low wall that served as a fence to watch the sun set between the mountains behind the monastery. The view was lovely. Daniela told him about her days at school in Loja. She explained that she knew the history of Spain well because of an aggressive and authoritarian nun from Pamplona, her greatest teacher. She hit us with a thick missal, here, right on the crown of the head. But she also taught us how the light of God had led the Spaniards through the seas and jungles to spread their faith through the New World, naming the cities they conquered for saints. The soldiers had fatally strayed from their God and had given themselves over to the lust for riches, to vice, madness, and sex, and in the end they had perished sick and punished.

That woman, Leonor Azpiroz, said Daniela with a remarkably precise memory, once hit me in the middle of class. As she passed through the rows, she discovered that my book was in poor shape, it had been through many hands before mine. It was a Spanish catechism entitled
He Is with You
. She made me stand up and then she slapped me. That is not how we treat school materials, she said. I remember being filled with rage, it wasn’t my fault, I had gotten the book that way, and when I got home I stomped on the crucifix we had made in arts and crafts out of clothespins. But the next day she saw the bitterness in my eyes
and she sought me out to hug me, she took my face in her hands and said, little Indian girl, you have the face of a saint, don’t let that change over the first injustice you encounter in your life. She was a wise woman, a wise Salesian who could see inside you.

Lorenzo took the opportunity Daniela’s confession afforded him to ask about her family. She told him about a sick mother who devoted herself to caring for all her brothers and sisters. Daniela had come to Spain and had the responsibility of sending money home. When they spoke on the telephone, her mother could hardly contain her emotion. I pray for you, she told Daniela.

I have a sister, a bit older than me, who makes my mother suffer in every way possible. She takes after my father, I think. We don’t ever see her anymore. She came to Spain before I did, but she never calls or anything. She got in with a bad crowd. My mother was very generous with me about that, she told me go to Spain but don’t do it for me, do it for yourself and earn honest money, even if it’s not a lot. Be decent and God will reward you. What do you think, challenged Lorenzo, that I don’t know how some people make money, even right in the neighborhood? It’s very difficult to compete with people who break the rules.

Then Lorenzo remembered a T-shirt he had barely noticed the day he saw Daniela wearing it.
HE MAKES ME HAPPY,
it read. And he’d had the feeling it was referring to him. But now it was clear it was about her firm religious beliefs. He felt he should warn her that he didn’t believe in God or go to Mass. Seeing her somewhat distant expression, Lorenzo launched into a confusing explanation, saying he believed in the existence of God, but not a God as understood by believers, but a more ethereal and
personal one, like a God who lives inside each person. When he felt that his words might not be getting him anywhere, he decided to drop the conversation, saying, it’s not that I think about these things very often.

In response Daniela told him, this structure could only be the result of true faith, the desire to honor God above all things. And Lorenzo looked up to see the immense esplanade and the monastery catching the sun’s last rays of the day. In his own way, he thought about the intrinsic Spanishness of its spartan construction, although he lacked the perspective to see it as a glacial leviathan of granite that broke with the pine-filled mountains surrounding it.

Daniela felt cold and Lorenzo put an arm around her shoulders. Should we head back? he asked her. It’s probably best, she replied.

They walked along the side of the highway in search of the van he had parked on the far shoulder. On Sundays we go to a church near our house, Daniela told him, the pastor is very intelligent. Lorenzo took it as a veiled invitation, but didn’t say anything.

They got into the van. Lorenzo drove along the street that bordered the monastery and at every speed bump he couldn’t help but cast a sidelong glance at Daniela’s breasts bouncing up and down. Meanwhile, she talked to him about the parish. Every day there are more Spaniards. Sometimes Spaniards think these churches are just for South American wetbacks, but now they come in, they hear us sing, and some of them join. Do you know what they tell me? That religion here was always sad. You celebrate God with happiness, laughter, Lorenzo dared to interject. The last Mass he had been to was probably at Lalo’s father’s funeral, almost fifteen years ago.

The highway back to Madrid goes through fields fenced with stone, and Lorenzo and Daniela stare straight ahead. Not looking at each other allows them to speak more honestly.

Your people are more cheerful in everything, Lorenzo heard himself say. And a second later he felt he had gone too far. Appearances can be deceiving, Daniela corrected. We suffer a lot. People only see the partying and dancing and all that, but there’s another side to it. I bet you know a Colombian woman. Colombian? No, why? asked Lorenzo. You’d like them better than me, that’s for sure, said Daniela, still looking straight ahead, as if she wanted to challenge him. They are shameless, nothing stops them. Well, I don’t want to generalize …

Lorenzo felt a stab of anxiety. He was carrying a good bit of money in his wallet, thinking that she would want to go out dancing, or to a restaurant or somewhere for some fun. Now he realized his mistake.

A few days earlier, he had passed by his friend Lalo’s office to get paid for clearing out the apartment. Actually, he confessed to his friend, I left the amount blank, I don’t know what to put. Lalo skillfully drew up an invoice on his computer and asked Lorenzo to peek over at it. Does that seem fair to you?

It’s a bit more than what I was thinking, Lorenzo admitted.

Lalo printed the invoice on his computer and took the money out of a drawer in his desk. Don’t worry, that was what we had anticipated, I swear. They went for a cup of coffee. The morning was bright, but the café was dark, with windows only at the front. Lorenzo asked Lalo about the owner of the apartment. There are some personal objects that should maybe be given to him, but, of course, now that you’ve sent him to live under a bridge …

Lorenzo’s statement sounded like a direct accusation. Lalo justified himself. Not at all, we set him up in a residence for the elderly. I don’t really know him, it was all handled by a guy in sales. It’s one of those things that when they tell you about it, about the whole mess with the neighbors, the police reports, you think it’s going to be incredibly complicated, that it’s best not to get involved, but then it turns out to be really simple. In barely two weeks it was resolved. You know what I thought afterward? That actually nobody had offered to buy the guy’s apartment and really he was wanting to sell. It’s simple, right? The best place for him is in a home. I don’t know, seems like a guy who lost his marbles. Somebody talked about an accident …

Do you know what home he’s in? Sure, in the office I have all the information, you want it? No, well … Lorenzo didn’t want to show too much interest. When you empty out a house like that you feel kind of sorry about it, you think you’re destroying someone’s life, everything they’ve accumulated in a life.

In my job, Lalo explained, you see things that break your heart in two. Think about it, a lot of times their apartment is the last thing people have. My boss always says something brilliant: your monthly installments can’t be paid in pity. And it’s true, life is a cycle, in the end … No matter how bad you feel about it. A living person moves into a dead person’s house; when things are going bad for one person, they’re going better for somebody else. That’s life.

He walked Lalo back to his office. His friend explained that after the renovations in the apartment they could sell it, in that neighborhood, for four times what they’d paid. It’s just one of those things that worked out well for us, he confessed to Lorenzo. Then he got the information on the home where the
former owner was now living. Jaime Castilla Prieto, the name is completely normal, he remarked. And don’t feel like you have to bring him anything, the guy is totally cuckoo, and Lalo made a vague gesture with his hand. Lorenzo shrugged his shoulders.

It was the money he’d gotten from Lalo that was burning in Lorenzo’s pocket on Saturday. The heat in the van smelled of fuel. When Daniela told him she hardly knew the outskirts of Madrid, Lorenzo told her how, just a few years ago, it had been pastureland for sheep and cows.

Daniela confessed that going anywhere made her panicky. She didn’t have papers and she didn’t want to meet the police in a train station or on some trip. They keep you locked away for two days and then they write you up an order of expulsion. She had come to Madrid two years earlier on a tourist visa, her only plan being to send money to her mother. Someday I want to have my own house, but not one of those enormous homes that other immigrants build with money from Spain, I don’t want to show off like they do, just something simple, pretty. Lorenzo asked her what her first steps were when she arrived in the country.

You already know Nancy. She helped me a lot. At first I took care of an elderly woman. You know that gray-haired man who has an interview show on TV in the afternoons?

Lorenzo nodded vaguely, but it took him a while to figure out who Daniela was talking about. Well, I took care of his mother. They didn’t give me any days off. Not even Sunday afternoons. The family hardly ever came to see the woman. And I had nothing to eat. Do you know what I lived off of? You know those chocolate cookies, Príncipe brand? Two or three a day, that was it. I had terrible anemia and one day I fainted in the woman’s
house. They put me in the hospital. And the TV host came right over and without even asking how I felt, he started threatening to make my life impossible and that he’d have me kicked out of the country if I said anything. He even went so far as to tell me he was a friend of the king. Right there in the hospital, he fired me.