The Skating Rink (11 page)

Enric Rosquelles:

Unfortunately, after dinner, Pilar insisted that we go to a disco

Unfortunately, after dinner, Pilar insisted that we go to a disco;
she suddenly felt like dancing with her husband, something they hadn’t done for
a long time, and everyone thought it was a wonderful idea. Except me. I should
have grabbed Nuria and made my getaway right then, but I thought she deserved a
bit of fun. My big mistake, of course, was not foreseeing that someone would
bring up the subject of skating. Nuria’s presence, as I soon realized, made it
inevitable, and the dreaded moment came while we were watching people make fools
of themselves on the dance floor, before we had dared to do likewise. The
councilor in charge of culture, or his wife, one of them, opened fire by asking
if there was a competition coming up. Nuria’s reply was utterly naïve: yes.
Initially there was some talk about her representing Z: she had to fly the flag
and fly it high. Then, for want of a better topic, I guess, the difficulties and
delicacy of skating were discussed (like an iron butterfly, shouted out the
councilor responsible for tourism, visibly pleased with his simile) and Nuria
had no choice but to agree and assure them, with all her candid enthusiasm (poor
Nuria), that she was training for at least five hours a day. In Barcelona? asked
Enric Gibert. No, in Z, said Nuria, as emphatically as a tombstone being dropped
into place on a grave. My grave. Luckily I have quick reflexes: right away I
asked her to dance. As we walked away toward the dance floor, I looked back and
saw Pilar staring at me. The rest of them were laughing and talking, but Pilar,
who might be careless and negligent at times, but is certainly nobody’s fool,
kept her dark gimlet eyes fixed on me. I would gladly have kept on walking and
never returned to that table. I was sweating, but not from the exertion. Dancing
has never been my forte, but I threw myself into that alien world, perhaps to
delay the impending catastrophe, albeit momentarily, perhaps to enjoy being
close to Nuria for the last time. And to be honest, I wasn’t too bad. All my
usual fears vanished in the commotion of the dance floor, and I believe I can
explain why: to dance well you have to forget your own body. It must cease to
exist. In spite of all its extra pounds and its divergence from current esthetic
norms, my body swayed and bounced, lifted one leg, then the other, then a leg
and an arm, then leaped in the air and spun around, all without any help from my
mind, which had, meanwhile, withdrawn to somewhere behind my eyeballs, where it
was assessing the situation, weighing up the pros and cons, attempting to read
Pilar’s thoughts telepathically (with a certain trepidation, I admit), guessing
at the scope of the questions she would ask and trying to fabricate convincing
replies. When we came back to the table, we were literally dripping with
perspiration. The wives of both councilors felt obliged to make humorous remarks
about my little-known passion for dancing, which they summed up by saying,
You’ve been keeping
that
quiet! I accepted their praise and their jokes
good humouredly, since they were giving me a few seconds’ grace. Pilar, by
contrast, was not at all talkative; her husband had just gone to the bathroom.
Inspired by my example, the councilors and their wives got up to dance, leaving
only myself, Pilar and Nuria at the table, which was plunged in an ominous
darkness. I remember there was a slow tune playing—was it a bolero?—and all the
dancers who a moment before had been jumping around among the lights let their
shoulders droop, went suddenly languid and collapsed into each other’s arms.
Wretched as I was, I thanked heaven that we were no longer dancing, since I was
mortified by the thought of Nuria resting her head against my shoulder or my
chest (as all the girls were doing, even the councilors’ wives) and smelling the
reek of my sweat. That’s the way I am; I always try to make a good impression.
No doubt people are saying now that on such-and-such an occasion my socks or my
breath stank. Lies. In matters of personal hygiene I have always been scrupulous
to a fault, since I was a teenager. But as I was saying: there we were, the
three of us, watching the dancers, avoiding each other’s eyes, and the mayor’s
husband still hadn’t come back. I could exaggerate and say that I was listening
to Pilar’s breathing, quick and uneven like my own, but it wouldn’t be true, the
music was too loud, as it always is in discos. When I brought myself to look at
Pilar, her face frightened me: it was as if her flesh, her features, were being
absorbed by her skull, sucked into a kind of facial black hole, leaving only a
trace of determination in her gaze and furrowed brow. At any rate, I realized I
was in for trouble. I would swear on anything you like that Nuria had no idea
what was going on. Her countenance, her beautiful perfect face, was flushed, but
only because she’d just finished a string of dances, that was all. Then the tall
and noble figure of Enric Gibert reemerged from the shadows. Ask her to dance,
said Pilar in a peremptory tone, clearly a ploy to get them out of the way.
Nuria accepted without hesitation, and I watched them from my seat, as she led
the way to the dance floor, and entwined arms with the overly adroit Enric. I
could feel a burning lump in my stomach. It wasn’t the moment to be feeling
jealous, but I was. My imagination spun out of control: I saw Nuria and the
mayor’s husband naked, caressing each other; I saw everybody making love, as if
there had been a nuclear attack, and no one could leave the disco, and there was
nothing left to restrain their passions and basic instincts; they had all become
rutting animals, except for Pilar and myself, the only ones remaining cool and
calm in the midst of the orgy. When I realized that Pilar was talking to me, I
gave a start. I snapped out of my reverie. Where is the skating rink? she asked.
I made a futile attempt to change the subject; I even mentioned her future
career as a member of parliament and the way it would change her life, but it
was no use; Pilar continued to inquire into the location of the skating rink, as
if it made any difference. What does it matter, I said, she has to train
somewhere, doesn’t she? At that point Pilar spat out a pair of heavy-duty
curses, and for a second I felt her lips, burning hot under the layer of
lipstick, against my ear: Where is it, for fuck’s sake? In the Palacio
Benvingut, I thought you knew, I said. Under the table, Pilar’s high heel
stabbed into my groin. I must have winced because Pilar shouted a new volley of
profanities into my ear. Take it easy, I whispered. Luckily the others came back
at that point. They all realized; Pilar’s face made it patently clear that
something had spoiled her evening, but no one wanted to deal with it; on the
contrary, they seemed even more bubbly than before, especially the mayor’s
husband, who kept joking with Nuria, while the councilors and their wives were
well on their way to a grade-A bender. Just remembering those minutes makes me
feel sweaty and crushed. Of course I tried to hold my head up and follow one of
the conversations going on at the table (Enric, Nuria and the cultural
councilor’s wife were on one side, with the other wife and the two councilors
opposite) but I couldn’t understand a thing: it was a chaos of laughter,
half-empty mixed-up glasses, and grunts and squawks unfit for human ears. Pilar,
who had, apparently, been talking with the two councilors, suddenly stood up, as
firm and strong as a tree, and ordered me onto the dance floor with a gesture,
although I suppose she said something too. Luckily for me, they were still
playing slow numbers. I say luckily because, in the first place, I was genuinely
tired, and secondly because, whatever music played, Pilar was going to keep a
firm hold on me so we could talk. To tell the truth, even at that moment, my
admiration and affection for her remained intact. Her force of character, her
obstinacy, her capacity to stand firm—those fundamental virtues of the Pilar
that she was and is—could only inspire profound respect. Nevertheless, in spite
of that esteem (which, I am sure, was mutual), it was the most hideous dance of
my life. Wearing a skewed smile I had never seen on her face before, Pilar led
me wherever she liked, and although I occasionally stumbled and seized up, in
the end she had her way with me. I don’t know if Nuria saw us or not, I was
never brave enough to ask her; I must have been such a pitiful sight!
Specifically, Pilar’s interrogation focused on a single point: who else knew
about the existence of the skating rink. Not when it had been built, or why, or
where the money had come from, but who else was privy to the secret of its
existence. I assured her that the people who had worked on the rink (who were,
in fact, very few in number) had no real sense of my overall scheme. Then I told
her that I was planning to present the project in detail at the council meeting
in September or October, once the summer season was over. The rink could be
opened to the public in December, in time for Christmas, half price for children
and a big do for the inauguration. In short, I presented a wide range of uses
and justifications for the facility, but nothing would calm her down. Much
later, when we were all saying good night, Pilar came over to give me a kiss on
the cheek, like Judas I thought, and whispered: You could ruin me, you son of a
bitch. All the same, she seemed a little calmer . . .

Remo Morán:

The old lady is a colleague of yours

The old lady is a colleague of yours, said Lola that afternoon
when we met in her office. That’s how it began. But earlier, at midday, I
had received a postcard signed by my son and sent from somewhere on the
Peloponnese. It had obviously been written by Lola; for one thing, the boy
hadn’t yet learned to write. My ex-wife often does oddball things like that:
talking as if she had Down syndrome, or like the evil child in a movie,
pretending her feet are frogs and speaking for them as she wiggles her toes:
Hi, I’m a frog, how are you? Actually, come to think of it, most of the
women I’ve known could turn certain parts of their body (hands, feet, knees,
navels, etc) into frogs, or elephants, or chickens that went cluck cluck and
then pecked, know-it-all snakes, white crows, spiders, wayward kangaroos,
when they weren’t transforming their whole selves into lionesses, vampires,
dolphins, eagles, mummies or hunchbacks of Notre Dame. All except Nuria,
whose fingers were fingers and whose knees were always knees. Maybe we
didn’t have enough time, or trust each other enough, maybe our senses of
humor were too different, but whatever it was, Nuria, as distinct from the
others, remained herself under all circumstances, like a monolith. It’s not
just that she didn’t turn into a mouse, sometimes it was even hard to
imagine her becoming what she was generally held to be: Nuria Martí, the
Olympic skater, the prettiest girl in Z. Anyway, I had received a postcard
of a satyr with an erect penis, and on the other side my son had made some
very funny and slightly barbed remarks about the image. It was obvious that
Lola had written the card, and that she was having a good time. I was
pleased that she had remembered me. About four hours later the telephone
rang, and I was surprised to hear Lola’s voice on the line. At first I
assumed she was calling from Greece, and my first thought was that something
had happened to the boy. But no, there hadn’t been any kind of accident, and
she wasn’t phoning from Greece. They had been back for almost a week, the
trip had been great, the boy got on really well with Iñaki, a pity it was
only two weeks. She was calling because she needed to talk, she had a favor
to ask, not really urgent, but
odd
(she stressed the word). Normally she wouldn’t have asked
me, but the rest of her colleagues were on holiday, she was sorry, but the
only people left in the Social Services office were her and a young girl who
had just started as a child welfare agent, so what could she do? The only
thing she could think of was to call me. She didn’t want to talk about the
problem on the phone. Before hanging up I asked if she’d been too busy to
call me earlier. Why? she asked. So I could see my son, I replied. He’s off
at camp. She sounded nervous or annoyed. At seven-thirty I walked to the
Social Services office, which is in a working-class district, back from the
waterfront, and a fair way from all the other government offices. The
building, which is really a tiny house built in the seventies, looks
run-down to say the least. After what seemed an excessive delay, Lola opened
the door herself, and led me to a room at the back that looked onto a cement
courtyard full of washtubs. The washtubs, which were no longer in use, held
potted plants. The lights were switched off in the corridor and the rooms.
There was no sign of the child welfare agent, so I presumed we were alone.
In her office, Lola looked tired and happy. For a moment I thought that was
how I would look too if we hadn’t split up. Tired and happy. Suddenly I
wanted to caress her and make love. But instead of asking if I could, I sat
down and got ready to hear what she had to say to me. First we talked about
the trip to Greece and about our son. Then, when we’d both had a good laugh,
as we usually did, we talked about the old woman. The story went like this,
as Lola told it to me: an old woman of no fixed address, who sometimes
begged in the streets of Z, and called on Social Services from time to time,
had come to the office the previous afternoon with a problem. She lived with
a girl; the girl was sick, and the old woman didn’t know what to do. The
girl didn’t want to go to the hospital; in fact, she didn’t even know that
the old woman was trying to help her. She wasn’t from Z either; she’d
arrived at the beginning of summer, probably from Barcelona, and didn’t beg,
although she sometimes kept the old woman company when she did her rounds.
According to the old woman, the girl was bleeding from the mouth and nose
every day. She also ate like a bird; if she went on that way she’d die for
sure. The old woman thought that the girl wouldn’t put up a fight if Lola
went to get her and take her to the hospital. She was very emphatic about
going to fetch her: if Lola or someone she could trust didn’t actually go
and get her, the girl would just stay in the ruins. It took me a while to
understand that by “the ruins” she meant the Palacio Benvingut. That was
when I began to get interested. The old woman and the girl had been living
there almost since the beginning of the season. In the old woman’s words,
both of them were “ready for anything,” the girl even had a knife, a big
kitchen knife, but don’t go telling. Lola didn’t ask her what she meant by
that, or who she was trying to keep a secret from. The old woman’s a bit
loopy, she explained. In the end she agreed to go, and the two of them
arranged a day and a time. When it was all sorted out, the old woman
(amazingly, given her age) jumped for joy a couple of times and laughed so
hard Lola thought she was going to have a heart attack on the spot. As if
she’d won the lottery for the blind. Soon afterward, however, Lola realized
that, in her hurry, she’d forgotten that her diary was full of binding
engagements, which would make it impossible for her to go to the Palacio
Benvingut, but she didn’t want the old woman to feel like she was being put
off. Why are you so interested in her? I don’t know, said Lola, she’s a
charming old thing, she brings me luck, I met her not long after getting
pregnant. Ah, I see, I said. Incomprehensibly, my eyes filled with tears and
I felt alone and lost. I’ll go if you want, I said, like a man condemned to
death bidding his family farewell. That’s what I wanted to ask you, said
Lola. It was a simple task: I had to turn up between ten and eleven the next
morning at the Palacio Benvingut and drive them to the hospital. Lola would
take care of the rest; she’d be free by the time we got there and she’d wait
for us at the entrance. That was all. You don’t think this girl with her
knife is dangerous? I asked, but not seriously, more as a joke and a way to
keep the conversation going. No, said Lola, it sounds like she’s a physical
wreck. And what was that about you or someone you trust? That’s just the old
lady carrying on, said Lola. I’m sure you’ll find her interesting; she’s a
real character, and a colleague of yours, by the way. A colleague? Yes, said
Lola, she used to be an artist too, in the old
days . . .