The Skating Rink (6 page)

Enric Rosquelles:

I would leave the car parked under the old vine arbor

I would leave the car parked under the old vine arbor, Benvingut’s
Roman arbor, which had resisted the passage of time and was still there, covered
in dust but standing firm. Nuria would arrive around seven, on her bike, and I
was almost always by the door, sitting on a wicker chair that I had found in one
of the rooms and cleaned and disinfected, before placing it in a cool shady
place from which I could spy Nuria’s bicycle when it first appeared on the
highway to Y; then it would be hidden for a while by trees, before reappearing
on the long road that led straight up to the palace. Once the rink was finished
we saw each other every day of course. I would usually bring some
fruit—apricots, grapes, pears—a thermos of strong tea, and the radio cassette
player that Nuria used for training. She brought a sports bag with her costume
and skates, and a bottle of water. She also used to bring books of poetry, a new
one every three days or so, which she would browse through during her breaks,
leaning against one of the many cases I had decided to leave inside the big
shed, so as not to arouse suspicion. Who else knew about the existence of the
rink? Well, no one and everyone, in a sense. Everyone in Z knew something or
other, but no one was smart enough to put the pieces of information together and
form a coherent whole. It was easy to fool them. Actually, I don’t think anyone
really cared what was happening with the mansion or the money. Or, no, they did
care about the money, of course they did, but not enough to work overtime trying
to find out where it had gone. In any case, I was always careful. Not even Nuria
knew everything; I told her the rink would be a public facility, and that put an
end to her questions, although it was obvious that we were the only ones using
the Palacio Benvingut for the duration of that summer. Nuria had her own
problems, of course, and I respected that. They say love makes people generous.
I’m not so sure; it made me generous with Nuria, but no one else. With other
people I became wary and selfish, petty and malicious, perhaps because I knew
what a treasure I possessed (a treasure of immaculate purity) and couldn’t help
comparing my situation to the filth in which they were all wallowing. I can
confidently say that there has been nothing in my life to match the suppers or
dinners we had together on the steps leading down from the palace to the sea.
Nuria had a way of eating fruit while gazing at the horizon that was, I don’t
know, unique. And the view was truly exceptional. We hardly spoke. I would sit
on the next step down and look at her now and again (looking for too long could
be painful), sipping and savoring my tea. Nuria had two track suits, a blue one
with diagonal white stripes, which was, I think, the official tracksuit of the
Olympic skating team, and a jet black one, a gift from her mother, which set off
her blonde hair and her perfect complexion: she looked like a Botticelli angel
flushed with exertion. Instead of looking at her, I looked at the tracksuits,
and I still remember every fold, every wrinkle, the way the blue one bulged at
the knees, the delicious scent that the black one gave off when Nuria was
wearing it and the evening breeze made words superfluous. A scent of vanilla, a
scent of lavender. Next to her, I must have looked out of place. You have to
remember I came straight from work to our daily meetings, and sometimes I didn’t
have time to change out of my suit and tie. But when Nuria was late, I’d get
some jeans from the trunk of the car and a thick, loose-fitting Snyder
sweatshirt, and take off my shoes and put on some Di Albi mocassins, which are
supposed to be worn without socks, although I sometimes forgot. I did all this
under the arbor, sweating and listening to the insects. I never put on my
tracksuit when she was around. Tracksuits make me look twice as fat as I am,
they expand my waist mercilessly, and I fear they even make me look shorter.
Once Nuria tried to get me to skate with her for a while. Excuse me for
laughing. I guess she wanted to see me in the middle of the rink, which is
why she brought another pair of skates that evening and absolutely insisted
that I put them on. She even lied, Nuria, who never told a lie, she said
that for the routine she wanted to practice, she needed somebody beside her.
I had never seen her behave like that, like a spoilt, sulky child, like a
tyrannical princess, but I put it down to tiredness, boredom and maybe
nervous tension. Her big day was approaching, and although I told her that
she was skating wonderfully, who was I, really, to judge? In any case, I
never put on the skates. Out of cowardice, fear of ridicule or falling over,
or because the rink was there for her benefit, not mine. But I did
occasionally dream I was skating. If you’ve got time I can tell you about
it. Not that there’s much to tell: I was simply there, in the middle of the
rink, with skates on my feet, and all the building work I had been planning
on before they found me out was complete: comfortable new seats on both
sides of the rink, showers, massage tables, an immaculate dressing room, and
I could skate, I could spin and leap, I was moving smoothly over the ice,
riding on absolute silence . . .

Remo Morán:

I have very few clear memories of Nuria’s second visit to the hotel

I have very few clear memories of Nuria’s second visit to the hotel.
She came to the Del Mar at lunchtime, like before, but didn’t have coffee or
want to go up to my room. She felt claustrophobic in the hotel, so we went for a
drive. When we got into the car, I was the one feeling claustrophobic; I’m a
terrible driver, I don’t like cars, and although I own one, it’s mainly used for
transporting supplies to the hotel, and I don’t even do that myself. For a while
we drove around aimlessly on inland roads; the heat was stifling and we sweated
profusely, not saying a word. With a sudden sinking feeling I thought she might
have come to split up with me. Pines, orchards, empty riding schools and old
wholesale pottery stores slid by so slowly it was excruciating. Finally, between
yawns, Nuria suggested we go back to the hotel. When we got there, we went
straight up to my room. I remember her skin under the hot shower. I was outside,
but because of the steam I was dripping with sweat. She had her eyes shut
tightly, as if there was something only she could sense in between the drops of
water. As if the numberless scalding droplets were launching an attack on her
skin. The water dripping from her perfect legs left a wet trail across the
tiles. I put on the air conditioning and watched her go out onto the balcony and
look at the sea. Before getting into bed, she cast an eye over my bookshelves
and the wardrobes. There wasn’t much to see. I’m looking for microphones, she
explained. Nuria’s movements had the peculiar property of continuing to vibrate
faintly in a room, or so it seemed, long after she had gone. She cried
underneath me, unexpectedly, and that made me stop straight away. Am I hurting
you? Go on, she said. Once I would have collected her tears with the tip of my
tongue, but the years leave their mark, they paralyze you. It was as if a kick
in the ass had sent me flying into another room where there was no need for air
conditioning. I opened the curtains, just a little, called the restaurant and
asked them to bring up two cups of tea with lemon; then I sat down on the edge
of the bed and stroked her shoulder, not knowing what to do. Nuria drank the
contents of the teapot, steadily, dry-eyed. At night, when I went to bed, I got
into the habit of speaking as if she was there in the room with me. I called her
Olympic Gold and dumb things like that, but they made me laugh and even double
up with laughter sometimes, which left me feeling inwardly calm, or lucid at
least, something I hadn’t felt for a long time. We never talked about love, or
even implied that what we did from four to seven had anything to do with love.
She had gone out with a boy from Barcelona and often mentioned him. She spoke of
him in a curious, distant way, as if his ghost was wandering about in the
vicinity. She extolled his athletic virtues, the hours he spent at the gym, his
absolute dedication. I often thought she still loved him. Some afternoons the
hotel room was like a crater about to erupt. According to Alex it’s impossible
to maintain a relationship in the space of a room; sooner or later, one or the
other is going to get bored. I agreed, but what could I do? Whenever I suggested
going out, she said no; in the evening she was too tired, or something, and I
didn’t really feel like doing the rounds of the discos either. One night,
though, about two weeks after we met, we did go out, and it was great. A brief
but joyful excursion. When I was taking her back to her place (she never invited
me in), I said that I found her beauty unnerving. A rash confession, because I
knew it was something she didn’t like to talk about. In retrospect her reply
stands out as the most significant moment of that night. (We spent the rest of
it laughing continuously.) In a vehement tone of voice that banished all doubt,
she said that the most beautiful woman she had ever met was an East German
skater, the world champion, Marianne something. That was all, but it took me
aback. Nuria was obviously a girl who knew exactly what she wanted. Another
afternoon she asked me, with what I took to be genuine curiosity, what I was
doing in Z, a backwater without a bookshop or a decent cinema. I said it was
because of my businesses (an abject lie). Your business is literature, and
that’s why you should be living in Barcelona or Madrid. But then I wouldn’t see
you any more, I replied. That was going to happen anyway, she told me, because
hopefully she’d soon be back on the Olympic skating team and have her grant
again. And what will you do if that doesn’t work out? Nuria looked at me as if I
was a child, and shrugged her shoulders. Finish my course at the Institute,
maybe, give skating classes in some big city in Europe or at a North American
university; but deep down she was sure she would get back on the team. That’s
what I’m working toward, she said, that’s why I’m training
hard . . .

Gaspar Heredia:

The music was the “Fire Dance”

The music was the “Fire Dance,” by Manuel de Falla, and I could
see the skater’s torso moving in time with it as she lifted her arms, doing
a clumsy yet somehow affecting imitation of a devotee offering a gift to a
tiny invisible deity. The rest—the ice, the girl’s legs, her silver
skates—were mainly hidden by piles of packing cases left there to block the
way and make the place look like an amphitheater when viewed from the rink,
although as I made my way around them, they seemed to form something more
like a miniature labyrinth. For a start all I could see was the girl’s back,
her arms curved in an ethereal embrace and the spotlights shining onto the
ice, which reminded me of the lights around a boxing ring in Tijuana. The
floor was made of cement, sloping down slightly towards the center, and the
walls had been built on a foundation of irregularly shaped rocks, black with
smoke. I threaded my way among the packing cases, some of which still had
the dispatch documents on them, until I could find a better observation
post. At the edge of the illuminated area, a fat guy was sitting on a
multicolored beach chair, busily reading documents and annotating them with
a felt-tip pen; at his feet was a cassette player, with the volume turned
up, broadcasting the notes of the “Fire Dance” to every corner of the shed.
The fat guy seemed very absorbed in what he was doing, although from time to
time he looked up at the skater. The spotlights revealed something that
intensified my bewilderment: in one corner of the rink was a ladder going
down through the ice, and tangled around the ladder was a bunch of colored
cables, which also went down through the bluish-white layer on which the
curious skater was executing her figures. In spite of the cold I felt drops
of sweat running down my face. Suddenly, the fat guy said something. The
girl went on skating, oblivious. The fat guy spoke again, at greater length
this time, and the girl, who was skating backwards now, replied with a curt
sentence, as if what he had said didn’t concern her. Partly because they
were speaking Catalan and partly because I was very nervous, I couldn’t
understand what they were saying, but I felt as if I was inside a cave. The
skater started practicing little jumps and kneeling moves; then the fat
guy’s shadow emerged from the darkness and approached the edge of the rink.
There he stood still with his hands in his pockets, his remarkably round
head turning slowly, as he followed the girl with his shining, intent,
unblinking eyes. There was something disturbing about that odd couple—the
girl all grace and speed, the bottom-heavy man like a lead-weighted doll—but
watching them I also felt a kind of silent fierce joy, which helped me not
to lose my nerve and run away. I knew that they couldn’t see me, and that
Caridad was somewhere around, so I settled down to wait as long as it would
take. The skater began to turn on the spot, in the middle of rink, spinning
faster and faster. With her chin up, her legs together and her back curved,
she looked at first like an elegant spinning top. All at once, just as the
fat guy and I were both, I presume, expecting the routine to end, she shot
away toward the edge of the rink, in a move that although perfectly
controlled seemed to owe more to luck than to training. The fat guy clapped.
Marvelous, marvelous, he said in Catalan. I can understand words like that
(
meravellós
). The
skater went round the rink twice more before stopping in front of the fat
guy, who was waiting with a towel. Then I heard the cassette player clicking
off and the fat guy went back into the semidarkness and turned around while
the skater got changed. In fact all she did was put on a tracksuit over her
leotard, but nevertheless, he kept his gaze chastely averted. After putting
her skates in a sports bag, the skater said something I didn’t catch. Her
voice was like velvet. The fat guy turned around and, as if measuring his
steps, approached the brightly lit sector. How was it? she asked, looking
down, in a different tone of voice. Marvelous. You don’t think it was too
slow? No, not for me, but if you think so . . . They were
both smiling, but in very different ways. The girl sighed. I’m exhausted,
she said. Will you take me home? Of course, stuttered the fat guy, his lips
curved in a shy smile. Wait for me in the passage, I’ll go and turn off the
lights. The girl left without saying a word. The fat guy went behind a pile
of cases and moments later the whole rink was plunged in complete darkness.
He appeared again finding his way with a flashlight, and went out. I heard
them go up the stairs. What do I do now, I wondered. There were some dim
points of light above me. The moon shining through holes in the roof?
Disoriented fireflies more likely. It was only then that I noticed the sound
of a generator operating at full capacity somewhere in the mansion. To keep
the ice frozen? Still confused about what I was doing there, I sat down on
the freezing ground, leaned against a case and tried to think straight. But
I couldn’t. A different noise, not the generator, put me on my guard.
Someone lit a match at the edge of the rink and shadows immediately began to
dance on the walls of the storehouse. I got up and looked at the rink, which
was like a mirror now: Caridad was standing there with the lit match in one
hand and the knife in the other. Luckily the match soon went out and the
return of darkness reassured me. She had probably hidden in one of the rooms
until then and come to check that the skater and the fat guy were gone. She
was a trespasser in that warren of a house, like me. When she lit the second
match I realized she was on the lookout, and I felt bad about staying in my
hiding place, but I was worried that my sudden appearance might frighten her
and make things worse. My decision not to reveal myself was also influenced
the color of the knife-blade, which matched the color of the ice. After
faltering repeatedly, the second match went out, but this time there was no
interval of darkness; she lit another straight away and, as if succumbing to
an attack of vertigo, stepped back suddenly, away from the edge of the rink.
The third match soon went out, and its death was accompanied by a sigh. Only
once had I ever heard anyone sigh like that: a hard, harsh sigh, alive in
every hair, and the mere memory of it made me feel ill. I squatted between
the cases until all I could hear was the generator and my own uneven
breathing. I chose not to move for a long time. When I noticed that one of
my legs was becoming seriously numb, I began the retreat; it was all I could
do not to panic and go running down the mansion’s twisting corridors.
Surprisingly I found my way without the slightest difficulty. The front door
was locked. I jumped out a window. Once in the garden, I didn’t even try to
open the iron gate; without a second thought I scaled the wall as if my life
depended on it . . .