Berta Isla Read online

  Knowing that this shared life would come to an end, that, after a while, he would go away again, and that another period of nostalgia and waiting would begin, made me celebrate – as if it were an important event – each morning that we got up together and the close of each day when we had supper at home or went out, because when you work at an embassy there are always social functions to attend. No, he wasn’t the same young man, and I sensed in him an affliction of which he never spoke, or only to deny its existence, an affliction that, to me, was inexplicable; but the blithe, ironic young man had not entirely disappeared, had not been entirely cancelled out by that man who seemed ever more grown-up and even prematurely aged in his lack of interest in the future; if that young man had survived somewhere, he would be there inside him. And so when he was with me, it didn’t matter that he had changed and seemed tormented or elusive and suffered from an insomnia I could rarely cure; what mattered was seeing his smile when he smiled, his alert grey eyes, hearing his jokes and providing an audience for his impressions when he felt in a jocular mood, kissing him, cautiously or not, on the lips, and having him with me day after day, however changed or, if I can put it like this, however disfigured a version he was of the first Tomás, the Tomás I’d known for so many years.

  Once his absences in one place or another were established, though, he tended to return to Madrid in a very disturbed, exhausted state, as if he had just emerged from a nightmare or from a prolonged period spent under extreme tension, but after a few days, he seemed to calm down and recover his energy, as if he were gradually detaching himself from what he had experienced and was embracing the respite before his next excursion. As the weeks passed in my company, and despite his nebulous state, he grew quieter and his spirits lifted, and he allowed himself a breathing space, reacquainted himself with family and friends and the daily life of the city, which included attacks by ETA or by some other group, as well as occasional crimes committed by the far right, conflicts and arguments and threatened military coups, the state of permanent uncertainty that filled us all with both hope and disquiet after the death of Franco the interminable. None of this appeared to affect him very much, as if it were none of his business, or as though he were accustomed to far worse things, which didn’t make much sense if all he had to do in England was rub shoulders with the powerful, deal with paperwork, attend receptions and act as interpreter or mediator. I can’t say that I never suspected anything, that it never occurred to me that he was doing something else, especially when, after an absence of just over two months, he returned with a mark on his face: I mean, with a visible scar on one cheek left not by a razor blade, but by a knife or dagger. By the time I saw it, the wound had healed. It hadn’t been a deep cut, but would probably leave a mark for quite some time or possibly for ever if someone knew where to look, unless, that is, he had plastic surgery, as he said he would and which he clearly did, because when he next returned, there was, incredibly enough, not a trace, as if no knife had ever slashed his cheek; some eminent surgeon, a consummate professional, had obviously intervened. But when I first saw the scar, I was alarmed.

  ‘What happened? Who did that to you?’

  He ran his thumbnail caressingly over his cheek, as if this had already become an habitual gesture.

  ‘Oh, it happened some time ago now. Two muggers pounced on me one night when I’d left work late and had decided to walk home, and I was nearly there too. A couple of guys with knives. They were after my wallet, which I refused to give them. I kneed one of them in the chest and ran off, but not before the other guy had lashed out and cut my cheek. Fortunately, it was just the tip of the knife, not the blade. It was only a superficial wound, although it bled a lot initially. Anyway, as you can see, it’s healed up nicely.’

  ‘It might be superficial, but it’s quite long.’ The scar went from the top of one of his sideburns down almost to his jawline; the fashion then, of course, was for long sideburns. ‘It’ll leave a permanent mark. Why didn’t you tell me about it when it happened?’ And then it was my turn to stroke the scar tentatively, tenderly. We used to speak on the telephone when possible, and he had never even mentioned being mugged, either at the time or afterwards. ‘It must have really hurt.’ I noticed a texture similar to that of his lips, at once soft and faintly ridged.

  ‘I didn’t see the point in alarming you. You’d have wanted to come over. As for the scar, don’t worry about that: as soon as it heals, they’ll send me to a specialist who’ll get rid of it. According to my bosses, a scarred face wouldn’t go down well in certain circles, it would inspire distrust. I’d look like a hoodlum, a thug. They assure me that not a trace will be left, my face unmarked. Just as if the mugging had never happened.’

  And so it was. Afterwards, I could never see any evidence of that incident on his face, even though, out of sheer amazement, I tried to find it, and really looked, looked hard, while he was sleeping or pretending to sleep, and when light was already coming into the bedroom. Strangely, though, what he did retain was that habit of running his thumbnail over his now smooth cheek, as if he rather liked the gesture: after all, in terms of duration, the scar barely existed. And yet, despite his perfectly credible explanation (at the time, London was full of muggers, partly as a consequence of that ghastly film A Clockwork Orange, which aroused such interest), I couldn’t help thinking that he might sometimes be involved in rather riskier missions than might be expected. When you work for the State, they ask and go on asking, go on tugging at the string, and generally squeeze both employees and citizens (‘Do this out of patriotism, this out of loyalty, this other thing out of solidarity with the weak or simply for the common good’), and there’s no way of knowing what they will end up demanding or extracting, what aberrations or sacrifices they will require. I’ve always been discreet, though, and have always known it’s best not to ask questions that won’t be answered, at least not truthfully. That only brings frustration. Best to wait for the other person to tell you when he has no alternative, when his situation is desperate or has been uncovered, or when he can no longer bear to keep silent (and almost no one can keep silent until the grave, not even about something that stains and will prejudice his memory). And the reason I know this so well is from personal experience and practice: I’ve almost never given an honest answer about anything I would prefer others not to know.

  And yet the day did come when I had to ask him, knowing that I would receive only a splinter of the truth, and when Tomás felt obliged to tell me that splinter of truth, to satisfy me with a wisp, a speck, a mote, a thread, or perhaps it wasn’t such a small thing, for him it was doubtless much more than that, an excess, which he hated having to tell me about. As I said, two years had passed since our wedding and three years since his definitive return from Oxford, quite a long time to keep almost absolute silence, to conceal completely the true nature of his activities in his second or first country, and no doubt in others too; I realised that I would never know for sure where he was each night and in whose company, where he spent his days, weeks and months. When I did finally ask, contrary to my usual custom and my natural discretion, it was out of fright, alarm, fear, in order to take precautions and find out precisely what precautions I should take, and to ascertain just how worried I should be. If you feel threatened, you need to know what’s going on, because ignorance is the greatest danger. Then, if you can and if you dare, you’re free to disregard that information, although you’d do better not to.

  The episode began in our local park, the Jardines de Sabatini, which I visited most mornings while I was on maternity leave, with my little boy in his pram, to get some fresh air and have a walk; we lived very near, in Calle Pavía, off Plaza de Oriente, opposite the Palacio Real, next to the Iglesia de la Encarnación. I would stroll through the little park, then sit for a while on a bench, almost always the same one, holding a book in one hand and, with the other, rocking Guillermo back and forth; Tomás had chosen the boy’s name, and I’d heartily approved: a homage to the
literary hero of his childhood, William Brown, or Guillermo el Travieso or Guillermo el Proscrito, as Richmal Crompton’s character was known in Spain, and whose adventures Tomás – even though he was bilingual – had read in Spanish translation, so that he could discuss them with his school friends, who wouldn’t have known who he meant if he’d started talking about Just William or William the Outlaw.

  I never managed to read more than about ten lines of my book when I was there, for any mother – or for me as a mother – it’s almost impossible not to keep checking that your child is still there, however often you pause to confirm that he is, whether emitting small sounds, or silent and asleep, or silent and awake. And in that small, unfrequented eighteenth-century-style park (mostly visited by tourists), with its modest labyrinths of box hedges and its small pond with a few ducks, whenever I heard footsteps or spotted someone out of the corner of my eye, I would immediately look up to monitor, if I can use that word, any change to the usually peaceable situation. And thus I saw the couple approaching some way off, a man and a woman, apparently married, she holding his arm, and they seemed inoffensive, even good-natured, but that is the foolish, stereotypical impression given by fat people, as if a fat person could not be just as dangerous as a slender Dracula or Fu Manchu. He was the fat one (a nimble fellow who walked briskly), she was not; but the plump do tend to infect those around them with their plumpness.

  They sat down on a stone bench, immediately opposite the wooden one I was occupying in the shade of a tree; they, on the other hand, remained in the sun, on that very mild May morning. I noticed at once that both of them were studying me intently, while trying not to be too obvious, almost as if they recognised me or were trying to, as if my face rang a bell and they were struggling to remember where they had met me before. As far as I was concerned, they were total strangers. They smiled at me and I smiled politely back. The man was wearing a raincoat-coloured raincoat, doubtless surplus to requirements given the weather, and he must have been about forty, with short, brown, curly hair, and unnecessarily large plastic-framed glasses, too big for his rather beady eyes; he had very small features – or perhaps his abundant flesh made them seem small – a short nose and thin lips, but a broad, sympathetic, pleasant smile, his teeth as orderly and regular as typewriter keys, an affable figure. The most striking thing about the woman were her large, blue, slightly squinty eyes, which a malicious person might have described as cross-eyed; she was a similar age to her husband, and one sensed that her skin was not quite as firm as his beneath the possibly exaggerated or rather old-fashioned layer of make-up she was wearing, her lips painted very red and her blonde hair either fresh from the hairdresser’s or from prolonged titivation in front of a mirror. She looked foreign, and he might or might not have been; if he’d let that curly hair grow longer (or grow fuller at the sides), he would have looked like a real party animal or a flamenco singer, but his skin was too white and soft, almost freckled only without the freckles, but in excellent condition: not a hint of a wrinkle, he would age far more slowly than his wife. She had a more elegant, immaculate air about her, that of a refined, well-dressed lady, with an equally cordial smile and a bust that was more maternal than provocative: she wasn’t fat in the least, but not skinny either, and her tailored jacket did little to conceal her breasts, prominent and curved (albeit pointed at the ends), which might prove almost overwhelming to a grown man, but welcoming to a child or a youth or, perhaps, to another woman. That squint, though, was rather unsettling, you could never be sure at any one moment where she was looking, although all four eyes – hers and his – were observing me, the pram with its hood up (they were probably curious about the child, as is only natural), even the book I was holding, they were doubtless trying to decipher the title and the author’s name. So insistent were their looks and smiles that I began to feel uncomfortable and was tempted to go home. Then the fat man spoke to me:

  ‘It’s Señora Nevinson, isn’t it?’ And he got up and came over to me, his smile growing wider, holding out a hand for me to shake.

  I responded purely mechanically; it’s almost impossible not to reciprocate that friendly gesture.

  ‘Do we know each other?’ I asked. ‘I don’t recall …’

  ‘That’s only natural. Why ever would you remember an old married couple like us? Not like your husband and yourself, so young and handsome. We met a few months ago, at a cocktail party at the embassy, I mean at Thomas’s embassy.’ It was unusual for someone in Spain to call him ‘Thomas’, he was always either Tomás or Tom. ‘We chatted for a while, but, of course, one can’t possibly remember all the people with whom one has exchanged a few words on such occasions. Besides, we don’t really make much of an impression, ha ha,’ and he guffawed modestly and falsely to support this statement: the two of them were, in fact, very memorable, he because of his sheer bulk and she because of her squinting blue eyes. ‘Miguel Ruiz Kindelán at your service. And this is my wife, Mary Kate.’

  The woman joined us then and kissed me on each cheek, as is the custom among women in Spain (‘No, don’t get up, my dear,’ she said, placing one strong, heavy hand on my shoulder and addressing me with female familiarity), although from her name and accent I realised that she was, in fact, a foreigner, even though she spoke very correct and fluent Spanish, which suggested she must have been living here for some time. He, on the other hand, spoke just like Tomás or me, more Ruiz than the more foreign-sounding Kindelán. And when the two of them saw Guillermo’s face, they could not conceal their admiration, which was, it must be said, somewhat over the top (‘Oh, but he’s just gorgeous, the little cherub!’ exclaimed Mary Kate); people do tend to go overboard with babies, even the ugly ones, of which there are a few.

  ‘Kindelán?’ I’d heard that name before, it didn’t sound Spanish, and yet it’s not so very unusual in Spain, I’d doubtless heard or seen it written somewhere, and more than once too. ‘Isn’t there someone famous with that name? I can’t quite remember who.’

  ‘Well, there was a general who died some years ago, Alfredo Kindelán. He was the first Spaniard to get a pilot’s licence, and he wrote a few books too. Perhaps that’s who you mean, General Kindelán. I believe he took part in the uprising, and he may have been in charge of the Spanish Air Force during the Civil War. I think he has a street named after him. No, I’m wrong, that’s General Kirkpatrick. As you know, there are quite a few Irish names in Spain, presumably because of the Catholic connection. O’Donnell was given a very nice central street, wasn’t he? And General Lacy did rather well too, certainly better than O’Farrill, O’Ryan, Wall, and O’Donohue and others, and yet O’Donohue ended up being Viceroy of Mexico; but then, of course, he did help facilitate Mexican independence, which didn’t go down too well. Did you know that he became O’Donojú, with a “j” and an accent on the “u”? It’s funny, isn’t it, Juan O’Donojú, that was his official name. He was from Seville, I believe. And he was a well-known freemason.’ He pronounced all those names (apart from O’Donojú) as a British speaker would, so perhaps he was bilingual, like Tomás.

  I couldn’t help noticing his use of the term ‘uprising’, which might indicate that he did not disapprove of the military rebellion against the Republic in 1936, although some people used the word unthinkingly, out of habit or contagion, or after all those decades of hearing the propaganda machine use it to refer to the initial failed coup d’état and the successful one three years later. (It was still being bandied about in 1976.) Thankfully, he didn’t accompany it with the usual franquista adjective, ‘glorious’.

  ‘Is Kindelán an Irish name, then?’

  ‘Apparently, yes. Although, as I understand it, there have been Kindeláns in Spain since the year dot, certainly since the eleventh or twelfth century. Originally, it would have been O’Kindelán, but who knows. Several of them became Knights of the Order of Santiago.’

  ‘And you belong to that very ancient, illustrious family, do you?’ I asked with a touch of irony, for he didn�
�t look the part of the aristocrat or someone of noble birth, although he was impeccably dressed, apart from his shoes, which were dusty from the sandy paths in the park, and his shirt, which, because of his large belly, protruded slightly above his waistband. He must have had to buy shirts with very long tails, as voluminous as sheets, so that they remained firmly anchored. I found that nimble fat man and his conversation most amusing. He knew things, and certainly knew about those Irish Spaniards (I’d only ever heard of O’Donnell), and it was interesting to learn about names and facts, strange and unfamiliar, at least to me. Despite my family and friends, I spent a lot of time alone. When you have a small child, you do tend to be left very much alone with him.

  ‘No, no.’ And again he laughed. ‘Well, I must be distantly related, I suppose, but the branch I belong to is quite unconnected to all those medieval knights and Santiago and so on. Perhaps one of my ancestors fell from grace or committed a dishonourable act and was rebuffed and repudiated, ostracised, exiled for ever from the Kindelán universe. That’s where I must come from. I’ve certainly never known any of the nobility. I’m middle class at best.’ Again that modest laugh. He laughed very heartily, despite being told off by Mary Kate.

  ‘I don’t know why you always have to talk such nonsense. You have no idea what happened. You must be related in some way to those knights and that aviator general. Miguel does like to joke, dear Berta. Your name is Berta, isn’t it? If I remember rightly, that is.’