Semmant (25 page)

Chapter 27

The first act of revenge turned out to be pretty stupid. Childishly naïve, desperately weak-willed. Lidia’s false sense of justice confused her, to her disservice.

Soon after I told her about Elena María Gómez, she staked out the maid by the entranceway and took snapshots with her Pentax. Elena herself admitted to me, laughing, that some crazy woman had taken pictures of her right at the door to my building. I knew immediately who it was and came clean, asking for her forgiveness. It was clear to me Lidia would not stop with the photos. Some sort of cruel games, vengeful plots, were in the works.

But Elena María had no complaints and was not offended by my lie. “You’re a handsome man. I’m flattered, even,” she said, smiling. “I’d take you to bed myself, if I wasn’t in love with Julio.”

That was the name of her Creole boyfriend. He was tall and broad-shouldered, worked as a furniture mover, and, as Elena once bragged, the size of his Johnson defied description. Against Julio I had no chance.

So, we just laughed it off, though not without some second thoughts. Later, however, it became no laughing matter for Elena. Lidia loaded her pics onto call girl sites – along with ads inviting people to have some fun with her. She posted Elena María’s name and phone number, which she managed to get from the domestic service agency. This was an extraordinarily foolish move.

I don’t know what got into her head – obviously, she was dumber than I’d thought. For some reason, she imagined no one would catch her, and she set it all up from home without even troubling herself to go to the nearest Internet cafe. Not only that, but she made the postings from her personal e-mail address, which was everywhere – on her résumé, on her articles and business cards.

Elena María Gómez, a beautiful, shapely
mulata
, was a quick-witted girl. Lidia probably took her for a simpleton, but Elena was a hundred points ahead in terms of inventiveness and smarts. Having escaped the Ecuadorian ghetto, she was studying IT at the best university in Madrid. Past deprivations had left no mark on her, and cleaning houses was just a temporary phase. A large portion of her free time was spent on social networking sites. She was popular; people loved her for her sweet temper and sly tongue. Her circle of virtual friends was immense. Lidia could not have chosen a worse target to provoke.

When Elena María started getting calls from the adventure-seekers jerking off to her photos, she grew utterly furious. In her world this was against the rules and had to be punished. Somewhere in the slums of Guayaquil she would simply have sliced up the face of the offender with the razor blade she always had on hand. Here, that method wouldn’t work, but there were others, no less effective. She consulted with a few of her contacts and put fierce reciprocity in motion.

I was kept abreast of the matter – Elena shared the details with me. At first she pressured the administrators of the malicious sites, and a couple of them responded. Thus we learned – though we had no doubt before then – where the ads on the Web came from. When it became clear Lidia was slinging mud openly, using her own e-mail address, our astonishment knew no bounds.

“
¡Loca!
” Elena said, twirling a finger at her temple, and began the payback campaign. She amassed a detailed dossier on Lidia, posted it on her blog to provide a reference, and, with the aid of an army of virtual friends, started to spread the story all over cyberspace.

This was harder than neighbors’ gossip or even a lawsuit. Lidia and her inept attack soon became the talk of the town. A Spaniard from Madrid, shamelessly slurring a humble Ecuadorian student: this instantly turned into a ready example of trite metropolitan snobbery. Lidia’s rancor and dull-wittedness were savored across several continents. People concocted all kinds of fables, drew caricatures of her. Thus she got a new virtual life – to replace Adele, whom she had lost.

Of course, it was bitter for Lidia Alvares Alvares. She experienced firsthand how an act of war turns against the one who starts it. And also what it’s like when you fight everyone at once in a world that knows no mercy. Even her appearance changed: her nose and chin thickened, and her facial features grew coarse. I barely recognized her when she showed up on Skype, yelling and cursing hysterically. She looked like a spiteful Fury of forty-something. Her hate for me reached its apogee. It was probably then she devised her next plan for vengeance – which worked.

It was a soft, dry September. Things between Semmant and me were the same as before, with no improvement. He did not react to my stories. No matter what happened now with Adele, the robot remained indifferent, apathetic. Something was going on in his electronic consciousness – the pictures changed; fragments of marches played; sometimes a sad violin sang for hours, barely audible. But there was nothing to connect this to. Semmant lived his own life, as separate from me as it was from the rest of the world. All the same, I continued writing – so that he would know I was here, with him. Sometime, I thought, he would digitally process this period as well. Transform it into gigabytes of neural cells on the hard disk. The robot would become stronger, sooner or later, as everyone does. Then our friendship and closeness would be renewed.

But that was still a long way off. Nothing happened; events paused. Through the window I examined the horde of bare-legged women returning from their vacations, but I felt only emptiness and boredom. Closing my eyes, I envisioned their bodies, the smell of their hair, but I sensed not even a hint of desire. The Buddha’s mat, neglected and forgotten, was collecting dust in a corner of the bathroom.

I understood I had to cast off this torpor, to revive, cheer up, but I could not find the strength. The projector seemed stuck on an empty slide. And then… something clicked, and it went off like a machine gun. Lidia called me for the first time in two weeks.

Surprisingly, she sounded calm. Affable and peaceful – I hadn’t heard her like that for a long time.

She said, “Let’s just see each other for a minute. I want to give you back the keys to your apartment.”

“Forgive me,” she added. “I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“I won’t act like that anymore,” she promised, and I believed her. And I did not suspect anything was amiss.

We agreed to meet at the Prado Museum. The sky was cloudless, and the sun baked everything. I was covered in sweat by the time I had strolled from the underground parking to the north entrance. There wasn’t long to wait; in a quarter of an hour Lidia arrived, all in pink and blue. She was leading a friend by the hand, someone I had already met – Manuel, the fan of Iberian pigs. The look on his face struck me as strange; he walked as though led to the slaughter, noticing nothing around him. Oddly, I did not connect this with Lidia or myself.

Lidia Alvares Alvares, however, strode confidently, like an icebreaker, cutting through the throng of tourists. As if she saw her goal and didn’t wish to notice any obstacles whatsoever. It was clear: there was no stopping her.

An alarm went off inside me as I suddenly knew something very bad was about to happen. I knew it but froze in place, standing there, not moving, deep in lethargy. There was no way to avoid what was coming. The stream of Dao narrowed at this point and rushed forward like a mountain river. Its power was irresistible, and no one could jump free of it.

Lidia walked up, stopped, smiled – then suddenly dove forward and rammed her face into my shoulder. This was an abrupt, practiced maneuver; I did not manage to react and deflect it. Her cry rang out; she crashed into me again – and howled, smearing blood down her cheeks. Someone else began screaming. I simply kept standing there in confusion, not moving. Just as motionless stood Manuel, her friend.

“What are you waiting for?” Lidia yelled at him. “What? Can’t you protect me? Or don’t you remember – this isn’t the first time! You know how dangerous he is!”

I looked at both of them as if they were comic-strip characters come to life. I also saw myself positioned somewhere in their vicinity – as if I were a spectator on the sidelines. The degree of absurdity surpassed all limits; I could not believe what was happening. Yet, the impossible
was
happening – frame by frame, shot by shot.

Here: Manuel tried to catch me by my shirt. I grabbed his hand and quietly pushed him away. He fell with a theatrical groan and cried, “Help!”

Here: Lidia, ceasing her wailing, screamed at the top of her lungs, “Police!” I mechanically noticed she was covered in quite a bit of blood – she had probably broken her nose.

Here: Manuel again, pale and as frightened as a hare, ineptly swung his hand, intending to punch me. It was clear fighting wasn’t his strong suit. I could easily have knocked him down with a hook to the liver or a cross to the jaw, but I did not. Instead, I turned and took a step away.

Meanwhile, police were running from all directions. The first of them was quite close. “What a joke!” I muttered out loud, certain I was in no danger. I was shaken by all the fakery of the staging, its unreality and perversion. But it turned out I was the only one who saw it that way.

A second later they cuffed me, rather roughly. “Hey, take it easy,” I yelled, but somebody kicked me in the shin, and I shut up. There was plainly no point in resisting.

“Get ahold of him! Tighter! Tighter!” Lidia cried, letting the tears flow again. One of the officers comforted her, hugging her by the shoulders. Indeed, a whole army of police had gathered, and they kept pouring in. Clearly, I was a force to be reckoned with.

A Peugeot with lights flashing on its roof drove onto the sidewalk, scaring away the gawkers, and stopped next to us. They stuffed me inside and drove me to the station. The interior reeked of smoke and vomit. I wanted to wake up, but this was no dream.

At the station, without mincing words, they put me in a cell that was already full of people. I finally came to my senses and expressed my indignation at top volume, but the guards merely shrugged their shoulders. My cellmates – vagrants and junkies – regarded me with frowns, keeping their distance and avoiding my eyes. I was wearing Versace jeans and Armani loafers. A strange spirit emanated from me, discouraging contact.

Then the chief came – an Andalusian, judging from his brogue – with the biceps of a bodybuilder and the inspired face of a poet. They took me into the hallway and stood me with my face to the wall. I was hastily searched, and my hands were again bound with handcuffs. And then they led me to a neighboring room, where a man with the face of a horse was already sitting pompously in his chair.

The police chief turned out to be exceptionally polite. He entered with a springy step, inspected us, silently nodded. In his eyes flashed an all-knowing, satisfied sheen. After pausing for a bit, he pressed a button and said quietly, “Get Señor Campo to put a move on.” Then he introduced the horse-faced man, “This is the victim’s advocate.” And finally, waving in the direction of the small man hovering at the door, he added, “And this is Campo, your defense. He’s being paid by the Spanish Crown!”

I could see the Spanish Crown wasn’t putting forth much effort. It was pointless to expect any help from Campo, but there was no choice – I didn’t have a personal lawyer. I could count only on my own wits, so I declared affirmatively, “This is an egregious outrage and a farce! I demand that you release me at once! I demand an apology from the police and the government, from the Crown, the king and queen, and from the ‘advocate’ of the so-called ‘victim’ – excuse me, but I did not hear your name…”

Public defender Campo slouched in his seat and let out a foreboding sigh. The police chief studied me with interest. And the horse-faced guy bared his yellow teeth and said gravely, “Call me Don Pedro!” Then he looked around and inquired, “Can we begin?”

He ran the show from that moment on. For a long time, savoring it and smacking his lips, he laid out my crimes. Lidia had spared nothing in her scheme. I was considered her former cohabitant, so the statute on domestic violence – a fearful beast on the Iberian Peninsula – applied to me. Her statement about my fits of jealousy and threats of retribution had already been on file with the police for a month or so. Yet another “friend” – whom I never met – was also involved and had signed declarations as a witness. A tangled web surrounded me. It may not have been real, but it was quite resilient.

Don Pedro sang like a nightingale. He sketched out the big picture, the entire battle scene. It contained wolves and lambs, monsters and innocent victims. Hordes of Spanish women, battered by their husbands, misfortunate Palomas and Martas with greenish-yellow bruises on their cheeks. The better part of society, mothers and housewives, and next to them their Miguels, Josés, Juans, dim-witted, simple-minded, not even worth a kind word. Men whose faults sooner or later become apparent even to them – so apparent, in fact, that they cannot live with it. In rage they swing their fists, torment their Martas and Palomas, subject them to insults, beatings, mutilation… “Is this not the very calamity with which the whole country struggles?” exclaimed Don Pedro, rolling his eyes in despair. “Is this not the shameful stain that we have been trying so long to eradicate?”

“Exactly!” I rejoined, perplexed at why my man Campo remained silent as a mouse. “This is a great shame, your Miguels and Javiers, your inadequate Josés and Juans. I can’t abide it myself when someone takes advantage of the weak – especially when he’s the tough one, even though society may have turned him into the weakest of all…”

“What are you talking about?” the lawyer squinted.

“The same thing as you!” I exclaimed. “This is a shame only found among humans. Male animals don’t beat their mates. They protect and defend them. As for the Spanish ‘Dons’ – that’s your national fault!”

“I beg your pardon?” Pedro interrupted me inquisitively. His intrusion was skillful, allowing him to seize the initiative afresh. But I did not give up. I raised my voice, expressing indignation right along with him, matching his tone.

Speaking the truth is easy and pleasant – and I, like Pedro, spared no adornment. I was trying to prove I was wholeheartedly and fully on the side of the Palomas and Martas. I gave examples – of Lidia’s former lovers, Rafael and Manuel – caustically deriding their inferiority. I mentioned how the former arrogance of the Spaniards had returned to them like a boomerang. This may have sounded offensive – for Pedro, and even for Campo. Perhaps the police chief was also a little wounded by my frankness. But it was too late to retreat. I grew excited and insistent. I told them about the strangers in Madrid cafes whom I watched, about their readiness to forgive and provide hope, about the softest ray, the Light of Eve. Nor did I forget about “the worst of bitches” – for contrast, to demonstrate the irrationality of society. I denounced the artificial unification of the sexes, condemned the attempt to paint everyone the same color…