Madrid
Adela had gotten up early. After making breakfast, she placed it on a tray – along with a single flower – and took it to her grandmother’s bedroom.
Asunción had a cold, and Catalina had insisted that she stay in bed a little longer, but nonetheless she found her grandmother up and about, sticking the last hairpins into her bun.
“I wanted to surprise you!” Adela protested.
She had been in Madrid for a few days. And it hadn’t been easy for her to talk to her grandmother. She had been as honest as possible. She had to find her mother’s rapist, but without telling her grandmother everything she knew, and definitely without telling her that Marvin Brian was not her father.
But Asunción was too sensitive not to realize that her granddaughter needed some help, so she had answered all her questions without asking any in return.
“Today we’ll have the day to ourselves. I made a reservation at La Taberna del Alabardero, that restaurant that you and Isabel are so keen to visit. But let’s go for a walk first. Is that a good idea?”
“You’ve forgotten the main event … Mass. It’s Sunday. Isabel and I always go to noon Mass.”
“I know… Let’s see, I’ll come with you to San Ginés, and then I’ll meet you at the end of the service. We can go for lunch, and afterwards come back here. It’s getting cold in the early evening these days.”
“I only have a tiny little cold, and it’s not chilly at all, it’s only October. But I am very thankful for all the care you take of me.”
Asunción extended her hand towards her granddaughter, who bent down to hug her grandmother. She was surprised by how much she loved this woman, given that they had only recently met. She wondered why her own mother was so little like her. Her grandmother had told her that Catalina had the same personality as her father. “Ernesto was a good man, but very stubborn. It was impossible to make him change his mind,” she was fond of saying when talking about her husband.
Isabel arrived at half past eleven. They walked slowly to San Ginés, and maybe because it was starting to rain, or perhaps because her grandmother was grasping her arm firmly, she ended up going into the church and staying for Mass. To tell the truth, she didn’t pay attention to anything the priest said, but she found comfort in the litany of the prayers muttered by the believers.
Once Mass ended, they saw that it wasn’t raining anymore, which allowed them to take a short walk around the Plaza de Oriente before going into La Taberna del Alabardero.
“This restaurant belongs to a rather peculiar priest. He is called Luis Lezama, and, if the rumors are true, he helped a lot of youngsters get clean and abandon a life of petty crime; he became the protector of the illegal bullfighters looking for a second chance, and opened this restaurant to help his ‘boys,’” explained Isabel.
“But I’ve also heard rumors that he’s a socialist, a ‘red,’ even if he was the assistant of Cardinal Tarancón, who was also peculiar in his own way… But what I think Father Lezama does is take the New Testament seriously,” added Asunción.
Adela was listening carefully. They sounded thrilled to eat at that particular restaurant, so close to their homes, owned by a priest. She herself had to admit that having a priest as a restaurant owner wasn’t usual. They ate while talking of everything and nothing, and then they had the chance to meet the priest.
He had a medium build, quick step, and vivid eyes, and he entered the place with some gentlemen that Asunción recognized.
“Goodness! All those men with him are writers, and very famous ones as well.”
The priest heard her words and came to their table to greet the ladies.
His hello only lasted a few seconds, but Isabel and Asunción were very taken with the priest’s manners and worldliness.
Asunción said she did not want anything for dessert, and Isabel said the same, but a waiter left a tray with a selection of sweets on the table, and they couldn’t resist.
Once the meal was over and Adela asked for the bill, they were surprised to see that they had not been charged for dessert.
The priest would never know it, but from that moment on, Asunción became one of his most fervent admirers, capable of showing her claws if someone attacked the “red priest.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon talking to each other and watching television. Isabel spent some time with them, but eventually she decided to go back to her house.
“She’s very lonely,” said Asunción.
“I know, and I feel sorry for her. I’ve grown fond of her.”
“She is a very good person, and… I’m sorry, but I cannot understand Fernando. Although to tell you the truth, I don’t understand Catalina either…”
“Grandmother, I cannot understand them either.”
On Monday, Adela got up early, and she needed a while to get ready. She was worried. What she was about to do could go catastrophically wrong. But she owed it to her mother, and to herself. It was time to break the wheel. She insisted in staying in and tidying the apartment while her grandmother went out to make the most of the autumn sun, trying to buy bread and coffee, though the shop didn’t have any coffee. Afterwards, when the old lady returned, Adela got ready to leave.
Her grandmother didn’t ask her where she was going. She didn’t want to force her to answer.
Adela walked along, mentally organizing the torrent of words that she knew she would have to say. She hesitated for a second, but eventually she stopped a taxi, giving him the address of the place where she hoped to find the answer to what had happened to her mother thirty-five years ago.
The hospital was near the city center. She entered the lobby and looked for someone she could ask for directions. She found an energetic-looking nurse.
“Turn right and follow the hallway to the elevator. Go up to the third floor; you’ll find her there.”
Adela didn’t doubt it. When she came out of the elevator, she looked for another nurse to help her find Sister Dolores.
“I think she’s in charge of the infirmary, at the end of the floor.”
She walked briskly to the information desk where she stood for a few seconds, looking at a team of nurses who were taking instructions from a nun.
The nun was more or less her own age. Ample forehead, prominent nose, brown eyes, slim. The only thing remarkable in her appearance was her smile. Every time she talked to any of the women, she smiled. She also looked in control.
Perhaps it was due to Adela’s insistent stare, but Sister Dolores turned to look at her.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“I…” stuttered Adela.
“Are you looking for someone?” insisted Sister Dolores.
“Well, I was actually hoping to talk with you. But I can see that you are very busy.”
Sister Dolores looked Adela curiously, and she asked her to walk with her. She took her to a sitting room with an oil painting and a statue of one of the saints. A sofa and a few chairs were placed around a coffee table. Everything looked worn, but clean.
“What do you want?” she asked in surprise.
“I know that what I’m about to say will surprise you… Maybe you won’t want to listen to me.”
“Well, even if I am surprised, I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“You look anxious and scared… What’s the matter? I know! You have a sick relative!” Sister Dolores could not hide her curiosity.
“You might not want to hear what I have to say, and you might throw me out of here.”
“Whatever you say, I won’t throw you out. Is that enough? I am here to help whoever needs me, and it seems to me that you need help, although I don’t know what.”
“You are a nun, and, well… What I’m about to say is tough.”
“I’m not exactly a nun, my daughter, the Sisters of Charity have vows that we renew from time to time. But nun or not, I’m sure that whatever it is that you are going to say won’t frighten me too badly.”
Adela sighed, and then, looking into Sister Dolores’ eyes, she started to talk.
“Thirty-five years ago a young man raped my mother. I was born as a result of that rape.”
“My Lord! Poor little lamb!”
“Your father was the rapist.”
“What on Earth are you saying?”
“My mother suffered a shock and blocked the events from her mind. Another young man found her, and he saw the rapist leaving the scene.”
“What on Earth are you saying? Why are you accusing my father?”
“Because the young man who saw the rapist leaving swears it was your father.”
“Perhaps he is saying this to exonerate himself… He wouldn’t be the first person to blame someone else for what he has done… It couldn’t be my father, my father is a respectable man, a good man. I can assure you of that.”
“I understand that it’s difficult for you to believe. I won’t hold it against you.”
“The man who accuses my father… Why?”
“For thirty-five years, my mother believed that it was he who had raped her, and that he was incapable of admitting it.”
“He could be lying!”
“No, he couldn’t.”
“In that case, it must be some other man… He could have made a mistake…”
“There’s only one way to find out the truth. That’s why I’m here.”
Sister Dolores looked more serious now, surprise and fear plainly showing on her face.
“I can’t allow my father’s memory to be insulted, to have him made the scapegoat for such a horrendous act. You don’t know him. He is the best father in the world.”
“No, I don’t know him. And I don’t want to either.”
“What do you want, then?”
“To know the truth, so my mother can face it. There’s only one way of finding it out, if you agree to help me. We would need to do a blood test. If your father is innocent, the analysis will rule him out. Unfortunately, there is no technique precise enough to positively determine paternity, but it is sophisticated enough to rule people out. If your father is not the man who raped my mother, the analysis will tell us.”
“But if the analysis doesn’t rule him out, then…”
“Then your father could be guilty of raping my mother. I need you to bring your father here, and take that blood from him, and then we will send it to a laboratory.”
“But how could you think I would do such a thing? You show up here, saying that my father raped your mother, and that you are the fruit of that rape. All of this is according to another man, who is the one your own mother thinks is the one who raped her, who blames my father instead. And on top of that, you’re asking me to bring my father here so we can test his blood? This is the Devil’s work! No, there’s no way… I don’t even know your name…”
“You’re right, I haven’t told you who I am. My name is Adela Vilamar. My mother is Catalina Vilamar. I am sure you’ve heard about my mother, and that you’ve met my grandmother, Asunción.”
Sister Dolores raised her hand to her brow. She felt dizzy, incapable of accepting what she was hearing from this unknown woman.
“Yes… I’ve heard about Catalina Vilamar… I wasn’t born when she left, but for many years, people talked about her in the neighborhood.”
“She left because she got pregnant as a result of the rape. I don’t know Spain very well, but you know that in the 1940s, a single woman who got pregnant was considered a disaster. My mother wanted to spare her parents the shame, and she also wanted the man who she thought was my father to meet me.”
“Catalina Vilamar… You must forgive me, but it could be that your mother invented the story about the rape, that she gave herself to a man, and afterwards…”
“My mother did not invent anything, Sister Dolores. My mother was raped, and she got pregnant, but being raped is traumatic and her mind defended itself. Of course her memory blocked out what happened, so when she opened her eyes she saw that the boy she liked was trying to help her out, she decided that whatever had happened had been with him: it was her way of dealing with what had happened. But that boy could not have done it.”
“You must forgive me, but I’m finding it difficult to believe all this…”
“I’m not surprised. I’m also finding it hard to believe that you and I could have the same father. I assure you that my mother and I are not looking for any financial compensation. I’m quite willing to sign a document stating that I will not make any kind of claim, not now, and not in the future. I don’t even want to meet him. I don’t want anything, except the truth.”
“I need to talk to my father… He’ll know what to do.”
“I beg you, don’t do it. At least not until we have the results.”
“Do you think you can come here and sit in front of me, telling me that my father is a rapist? That’s a terrible accusation! You’re saying that he’s a criminal. He could be sent to prison. And what about my mother? Have you given her any thought? Would she have to accept that her husband is a rapist? And what about my brother? Do I call him to tell him that his father is a rapist?”
“I’m sorry. I apologize for putting you through all this. I came to you instead of your brother because I was told he works for a charity in Rwanda.”
“Yes. You see, it turns out that my father, who you describe as a monster, taught us such solid values that both me and my brother work at the service of others.”
“I’m not here to judge your father. I assure you that the only thing that I want is to know who raped my mother. If things happened like I think they did, I know that my mother will suffer another shock, but I also know that she will be able to come to terms with it for the future. I can assure you that the last thing that my mother would want is to see your father, ask him for anything, know about him. I can assure you that.”
“I don’t believe you… I don’t know you… I can’t know what your intentions are… My father is a good person, a good man.”
“I’m not here to question how your father has been with his family. That’s for you to know. You may be a nun, but you are also a woman. I’m sure you can put yourself in the shoes of a young girl who was raped and got pregnant. If you turn me away, if you don’t help me find out the truth, which kind of nun are you? Do you prefer injustice to flourish rather than allow yourself to be shaken from your comfortable life?”
“Comfortable life? You have no idea what the Sisters of Charity do.”
“You’re right, I have no idea. I know nothing about nuns. But I do know that God won’t forgive you if you deny me your help. And if you do deny it … I’ll be forced to sue him for paternity. He will have to face the scandal.”
“Oh my God! You can’t do that.”
“Of course I can, Sister Dolores. I have spoken with a lawyer, and I can assure you that your father will be forced to do the test, and if he refuses, then a jury could validate the paternity claim even without a test. Besides, he would have to face the scandal.”
“My mother is unwell… You can’t do this! You’re blackmailing me!”
“I’m asking you to resolve this situation quietly. You get some blood from your father for a test, and I’ll get a sample of mine, and when the lab gives us the results, if they’re negative, you can forget about me. You will never see me again. I swear.”
Sister Dolores looked at her, scared, while she wrung her hands. Adela Vilamar was right. It would destroy all her certainties in the world if she found out that her father was a rapist.
“And if it isn’t negative?”
“Then I’ll talk to him. Your mother won’t need to hear anything.”
“Let me think about it. Come back tomorrow. I need to pray.”
“Pray, Sister, pray as much as you need to. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
When she got back to her grandmother’s house, she didn’t feel like talking, so she sat next to her in front of the television and pretended that she cared about the people on the screen, although she was really neither watching nor listening. She said that she had a headache and went to bed early.
Asunción looked at her worriedly, but didn’t ask her any questions. She decided to wait for Adela to confide in her. The next day, Adela went to the hospital early in the morning.
When she got there, they told her to go and wait in the room where she had spoken to Sister Dolores the day before. She waited there impatiently for a few minutes.
Sister Dolores came into the room looking tired. Her red eyes and the bags underneath them showed that she had spent a night of suffering and insomnia.
“Good morning,” Adela said.
“All right, I’ll get my father to do the test. But I’ll need to find an excuse, because there’s no reason for him to have his blood drawn.”
“How will you convince him?”
“He’s got bad kidneys. I’ll tell him that he looks bad and that it would make me feel better if he came to the hospital and had a blood test. Just promise me that whatever the result is, my mother won’t find out about it. I won’t make you sign anything, but I’ll trust you to keep your word.”
“I have no intention of hurting your mother. I just want to know the truth.”
“If it turns out that we are sisters …”
“Well, we can never feel that we are truly sisters. There’s nothing that ties us together. And I don’t need a sister and neither do you. Why should we pretend to be something that we’re not?”
Sister Dolores promised to bring her father to the hospital in a couple of days. For her part, Adela had now found a laboratory to perform the analysis with guaranteed results and absolute confidentiality.
Two days later, they met at the door of the laboratory.
Sister Dolores was nervous.
“I went to my parents’ house yesterday. I told my father that he didn’t look well and that he should come into the hospital for a blood test. He said he was well and that he saw no reason to come in. But my mother told him to listen to me: ‘If Dolores says you look bad, then listen to her. She is a nurse, after all,’ she said. And so he came in this morning. Here’s a sample.”
Adela took the tube and walked away. They were waiting for her in the laboratory, where the only thing they could tell her for sure would be if this man was not her father.
The train arrived on time. Eight o’clock in the morning. They had traveled all night. The Amnesty Law had been passed a week before, and Fernando had decided that he could risk coming back. Catalina thanked him for it. She was tired of having lived through such a long exile. Above all, she was afraid that she might lose Adela forever.
The two of them were nervous, full of nerves for the moment they would see their mothers. They imagined that they would be the same as they were the day they left, but they knew they would be meeting with two old ladies.
Fernando was scared when the conductor took their passports. But he only glanced at them idly.
Adela was waiting for them on the platform. She hadn’t wanted Asunción or Isabel to come to the station, but suddenly, as the train drew in, she saw them walking over to where she stood. She frowned, but then smiled. She understood them: how could they bring themselves to spend the day waiting at home? They had been waiting for this moment for thirty-six years.
Fernando stepped down first, helping Catalina after him. They saw Adela and the two old women coming towards them.
“It’s them,” Catalina whispered.
And then they broke into a run. Catalina cried as she held her mother tight, stretching out her arm to her daughter as well. Fernando paused for a few seconds before approaching, and looked at Isabel, wiping the tears from his face.
They held each other and cried for a while, unable to find the words that they had both spent so long rehearsing for this moment.
When Fernando walked into his mother’s house, he felt that he had gone back in time. Everything was as he remembered it. His father’s old overcoat was still hanging by the door.
His clothes were still in his wardrobe, as were his pencils and notebooks, and the book he was reading when he left, Macbeth. And there was his soccer ball, in the corner under the table, a present his father had given him as a child.
He hugged his mother again, and they spent most of the morning repeating the hug, trying to get back all the hugs that they had lost.
Catalina cried when she went into her house. Like Isabel, Asunción had made time stop within the walls of that house.
Catalina’s room was extremely tidy, her bed covered with a crocheted bedspread that Asunción had made. Her dolls were piled on a shelf. Her clothes were all clean and ironed.
She sighed, thinking that she had felt homeless for thirty-six years, and that suddenly her life was here, everything she understood and loved, between these four walls.
Over the next few days, Fernando jumped whenever the doorbell rang, whether it was the doorman bringing up a letter or the grocer delivering an order from the shop. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking that one of these days, the police would come to accuse him of having killed those two men thirty-five years ago. He tried to calm himself down, saying that the Amnesty Law would wipe the slate clean for supporters of Franco and of the Republic alike.
His mother hadn’t asked him to explain why he had been gone for so long. She waited for him to choose the moment. And Fernando knew that although he was afraid of doing so, he would have to face up to his actions. But now he was playing for time. He needed to get to know his mother again, and his friends from those bygone days, and his city.
Madrid had changed. It had become a major capital city, but also one that had to accept the passage of time. He was surprised to hear people talking so much about the future and so little about the past. They seemed keen to turn over a new leaf, to forget the forty years of Franco’s dictatorship.
He eagerly read the newspapers and sat down with his mother to watch the news on television every evening. He thought that if he had been able to vote, then he would have voted for Santiago Carrillo, but he had to acknowledge that his mother was right, and that what the country needed was a renewed left wing in its politics, and that this newness was represented by the young socialists, led by Felipe González.
“I voted for Felipe,” his mother said. “And I think your father would have voted for him as well. You know that he was more on the side of Indalecio Prieto.”
They had lunch most days with Asunción and Catalina and Adela, as well as with Petra. Asunción showed her enthusiasm for Adolfo Suárez whereas her sister Petra regretted the poor results obtained by Fraga Iribarne.
Catalina had asked her aunt’s forgiveness for having run away. Petra was nearly ninety years old and seemed to be afraid of the changes that were taking place in Spain. More than the political discussions they had as they ate, however, Fernando and Catalina were worried that Petra would ask about her husband’s pistol.
One afternoon, after tea, Petra asked Fernando and Catalina to come to her house, with the excuse that her knee was hurting and she was worried that she might fall over. Neither Isabel nor Asunción looked surprised.
When they left the house, Fernando told them to wait while he hailed a taxi, but Petra didn’t let him leave.
“We’ll walk, it’s not raining and it’s not that cold.”
“But, Aunt Petra, if your knee is hurting, then it’s better for us to take a cab.”
“Well, my knee isn’t really hurting, or at least it’s no worse than it was yesterday. I wanted to speak to the two of you alone. I don’t want your mothers to be scared, or little Adela.”
“Scared? Scared of what?” Catalina asked worriedly.
“Of what you did with your uncle’s pistol. You disappeared, and it disappeared as well. Why?”
Catalina looked at Fernando, and she spoke before he had the chance to.
“We didn’t know what might happen to us. We didn’t have any money, we had to sleep in the street, we were exposed to all kinds of hardships and problems. I was absolutely certain that I was going to leave, but I was scared, so I said nothing to Fernando and took the pistol just in case. Look, he’s only just found out about it now.”
“Didn’t you tell him?”
“No, of course not, he’d have left me if he’d found out about it, we were arguing a lot in those days. I hid the pistol and didn’t decide to get rid of it until we were on a train to Lisbon. I told you, we got on as stowaways. I threw the pistol out of the window because I realized that we weren’t going to need it.”
Petra looked suspiciously at her niece. Fernando said nothing and didn’t know what to do.
“So you just found out that Catalina took my husband’s pistol?”
“Fernando knew nothing about it, Auntie, he’d have been very upset.”
Fernando nodded and felt the sweat spring out on his neck.
“You’re a caution, Catalina! Look, Fernando’s gone all pale.”
“I’m just shocked by what I’ve heard,” he managed to say.
“Well, now all that’s cleared up, I think you should go and hail me a cab.”
They had agreed to meet at nine on the dot at the door of the laboratory. Sister Dolores had arrived half an hour early and was walking nervously up and down the street. Adela turned up five minutes early as well.
They said hello, and they went in together. A few minutes later, they got the results from one of the laboratory technicians who had carried out the tests.
“Sit down, please … here’s the report. I have to tell you that the test result was not a negative, so you are likely to be the children of the same father. I hope that this is good news for you.”
“Of course,” Adela said, seeing that Sister Dolores was trying to hold back her tears.
“Sister, I understand that you’re emotional, and I’m pleased that this is the news you were expecting. You can’t imagine the problems that there are in families when they find out that the head of the family has been spreading himself around a little … as might be the situation in this case. Anyway, the results say that you could have the same father.”
Adela paid for the test results and they went out into the street. She had to hold on to Sister Dolores’ arm to stop her from falling over.
“It can’t be … it can’t be …” she murmured.
“Now all that remains is to find out the truth, and that’s something only your father knows.”
“My father is the best person I know, and he … he would never be capable of raping a woman … He’s never had eyes for anyone but my mother …”
“Your father married your mother after raping my mother, so it might very well be the case that once he was married, he never looked at another woman. But I don’t care. The only thing I want to do is confirm that my mother was traumatized, and that as a consequence of the trauma, she entered a fugue state that led her to believe that another man raped her that evening.”
They had to go and sit in a cafe so that Sister Dolores could drink a glass of water and pull herself together. Adela ordered two coffees.
“I prayed all night to our Lord for truth to prevail,” the nun said, wiping away a tear.
“Well, He listened to you, because truth has indeed prevailed.”
“And what are we going to do now?” Sister Dolores said, looking at Adela with fear in her eyes.
“Nothing. As far as you’re concerned, you should just forget that any of this happened. I’ll never be in touch with you again.”
“But … But we might very well be sisters … half-sisters … my father is your father …”
“Look, Sister Dolores, the fact that your father raped my mother thirty-six years ago doesn’t make us anything more than strangers. I don’t want to hear from you again. Learn to live with this secret. It’s the best you can do, for yourself and for your parents.”
“But he … you … you hate him …”
“Hate him? I don’t even know what I feel. I’m not worried about him, I’m worried about my mother, and I’m doing all this for her.”
“He … he doesn’t know what happened … he made a mistake … maybe he didn’t rape her … maybe she let him …”
“Don’t even say that! If you dare insult my mother, I’ll report your father to the police for rape, and I’ll do everything in my power to destroy him.”
“Don’t threaten me!”
“Of course I’m threatening you! Don’t think for a moment that I’m not threatening you!”
Sister Dolores promised that she would keep this burdensome secret.
“Offer your suffering up to God,” Adela said angrily.
“You and I … Well, we’re sisters, maybe we could see each other again …” the nun suggested.
“Never! We’ll never see each other again! I don’t want to have anything to do with you or your family.”
“I’m not to blame for what went on between my father and your mother … we should try to understand one another.”
“No.”
Adela turned and stopped a taxi, leaving the nun alone in the middle of the street. She didn’t even feel like looking back in the rear-view mirror.
She told the taxi to take her to the practice run by a psychiatrist Dr. Ward had recommended to her. The American had told her that he had met Dr. Fuentes at a conference and that he had made a very good impression on him. He had given her the address of his practice in Madrid, which was where she went now, as she had arranged a meeting for that very morning.
Dr. Fuentes looked very like Dr. Ward, only a little older. He was very tidy. He listened to her without asking any questions until she had finished her story.
Adela had told him the essentials of the story, but had been very careful not to reveal that for three decades her mother had thought that Marvin Brian, the Poet of Pain, was her father.
“The most surprising thing about this story is that my mother never said, nor suggested, that she might have been raped. She seemed to think that she gave herself voluntarily to this … this man who was a friend of hers; she was in love him and he found her stretched out on the ground …”
“It’s normal for a person who’s suffered a shock to activate a dissociative defense mechanism to try to avoid further suffering. There are people who have a great degree of inner strength or who possess psychological defense mechanisms that allow them to face up to trauma, but there are other people who don’t, and what they do is to disconnect the rational part of their brains. When the trauma is a serious one, the disconnection is serious as well, and can even wipe out the actual memory of the traumatic event. But I can’t give a proper diagnosis until I speak to your mother.”
They agreed that he would speak to Catalina, because if there was one thing that Adela was sure of, it was that Catalina would suffer an even greater shock once she found out the truth.
She walked over to the Plaza de la Encarnación and sat in front of the railings. From there, she could see the first few houses along Arrieta Street. She had to put the second part of her plan into action.
She had spent days watching the man who might be her father. She was sure that he was, that Marvin had identified him correctly.
The man came out for a walk in the middle of the afternoon, leaning on a stick.
When she saw him, she followed him for a while before stopping him.
“Good afternoon,” she said, standing by his side.
He looked at her in surprise, and something like worry appeared on his face.
“I’d like to speak to you.”
“Right. What about?”
“About what happened thirty-six years ago at the Pradera de San Isidro.”
He stepped back and looked her up and down scornfully.
“Thirty-six years ago, you raped Catalina Vilamar.”
“Don’t be so stupid. Where did you come up with such a story?”
“There was a witness.”
“A witness? A witness to what?”
“Are you going to deny what you did that night?”
“I don’t have anything to deny, and I don’t have anything to say to you. Go away.”
“I want to hear you say the truth. If you do, then I’ll leave you alone forever. If you don’t, then I will make an official report and cause such a scandal that you’ll never be able to stick your nose outdoors again. You decide which you prefer.”
“An official report? What about?” The man laughed and looked at her scornfully.
“I will make a paternity claim. You are my father. A father that makes me feel sick just to look at: I wouldn’t take your name for anything. But I need to hear the truth.”
“You’re insane!”
“No, I’m not insane. I’m prepared to destroy whatever is left of your life, even if it doesn’t look like there’s all that much. You choose. If you tell me the truth, I’ll never bother you again. Or else you can see me in court.”
They looked at one another. There was nothing but anger and hatred in their gazes.
“You had a blood test a few days ago. A friend got me a sample of your blood, and I took it to a laboratory for a paternity test. You are my father.”
Adela looked this man in the eyes. She had lied to him, but she was sure that he was too old to know that blood tests weren’t yet able to establish paternity.
“A blood test? What are you saying?”
The man was now unable to hide his worry. He asked himself if perhaps his daughter had betrayed him, but he pushed the thought aside. She was a nun, and she was his daughter. How did this woman know that he’d had a blood test, then?
“Have you made up your mind? Either truth or a trial. I have the proof that you’re my father, but I want to hear you say what happened that night.”
“Your mother was … she liked to flirt. She knew that all the boys were crazy for her. She liked an American who paid her no attention. She drank more than she should have. She flirted with everyone, and a friend and I bet that we might be able to get further with her. I was the one who did the deed. She didn’t hesitate, and came with me into the trees. Catalina was trying to make the American jealous. I don’t care why she followed me into the dark. She was so drunk that she didn’t realize I was taking her clothes off. I’m a man, I’ve always been a man, and so we got to a point where she shouted and tried to fight me off, but I didn’t stop. Why should I have stopped? No decent girl would have drunk what she did, or flirted with everyone. She deserved what happened to her. She cried, but I was sure that she had her fun as well.”
“What you did was rape her,” Adela said, trying to keep her voice level.
“What I did was what all men do when a girl isn’t decent and doesn’t know how to defend her virtue. A woman who gets drunk knows what she’s asking for.”
“So you admit that you raped her.”
“The only thing I’ll admit is that I took her behind the trees and did what had to be done.”
“You said that she shouted and tried to fight you off,” Adela said.
“Every girl knows what’s likely to happen if they go with a man to a dark place. So why should I have stopped?”
“Your rape had consequences. Me.”
“That’s what you say. She left, disappeared. She left with Fernando Garzo, a kid from the neighborhood. I don’t care what he did with her. I’m not going to acknowledge you as my daughter. If you and your mother are after money, you can crawl back under the rock you came from. I’m not going to give you a penny.”
“Money? Do you really think we’re looking for your money? You haven’t understood this at all. Look, let’s make things clear. You’ve confirmed to me that you raped my mother, which is all I wanted to hear.”
“I didn’t rape her … she came with me voluntarily … then she changed her mind and started to shout and struggle … Fucking hypocritical little slut!”
The man stood still, frozen for a second. The woman had just slapped him in the face with the back of her hand. He was surprised.
“If you insult my mother again, you’ll pay for it dearly.”
Adela opened her jacket and he could see that she had a tape recorder strapped to her body.
He looked at her in confusion.
“You recorded me?” he asked in alarm.
“Of course. And I don’t think your wife would like to hear this recording. And even a judge might think that it was interesting.”
“What do you want? Tell me how much you want …”
“I never want to see you again. Never. You hear me. Never.”
She turned and walked away, leaving the man trembling and lifting his hand to his heart. She heard a noise. But she didn’t turn around. Someone shouted that a man had fallen over.
Adela called Dr. Fuentes and asked him to be prepared to come to her grandmother’s house at any moment.
Then she called her aunt Petra and asked her to come so that she would be there with Isabel and Fernando as well. They had all accepted, thinking that Adela only wanted to organize an afternoon of drinking tea and chatting.
Asunción was serving coffee when Adela thought that the right moment had arrived.
“I’ve invited you all here today because I have something very important and painful to tell you. Mother … I’m sorry … I’m so, so sorry …”
Catalina shuddered. Adela’s voice scared her.
“What is it? Is something wrong?” Her lower lip started to tremble.
“A month ago, I went to see Marvin Brian.”
“Marvin! I don’t understand …” Catalina looked confused.
“Sara Wilson managed to get me an interview. I went to see him in New York. After you went to the Académie Française, Marvin Brian went back to New York. He had to have an operation on his heart. Sara went with Farida and I managed to talk to her.”
“You were with Sara? That’s impossible …”
“We spoke, and I don’t know why, but in the end she decided to help me. She said that she couldn’t promise anything, but she would try to get me an interview with Marvin. My newspaper had asked me to interview him, but not just that, they wanted me to write about the unknown woman who followed him all over the world. About you. You can imagine how bad I felt. I made a decision: we needed to put an end to this situation once and for all, for your sake, for my sake, for all our sakes. You’ve never accepted that I don’t care about Marvin and that I had no interest in acknowledging him as my father. After a few days, Sara called me and said that Farida and Marvin would meet me. I went to their apartment in New York. I spoke to Farida and we had a conversation that … well, that was very illuminating. But I signed a non-disclosure agreement. If I passed on or used anything of what I am telling you now, I would owe them ten million dollars. And their lawyers will try to get me sent to jail. I signed this document. So, if any one of you breathes a word of this, then you’ll be sending me to prison. And I don’t have ten million dollars lying around.”
“What are you saying? I don’t understand …” Catalina’s hands were trembling now.
“Marvin Brian was wounded at the front when he was working there as a translator for an American journalist.”
“We know,” Fernando interrupted.
“What you don’t know is that he was castrated.”
“What?”
“He was shot in the genital area and the operation to save his life led to part of his genitals being amputated. He couldn’t have children; he didn’t have much to have children with. Marvin Brian is not my father, because he couldn’t be my father. He couldn’t be anyone’s father.”
Catalina got to her feet and looked like she was about to hit her daughter.
“You’re accusing me of lying! You’re saying that I’ve made all this up! How dare you insult me like this!”
“No, you haven’t made anything up, at least not consciously. I’ve spoken to two psychiatrists, one in New York and the other in Madrid, and they say that if someone suffers a sexual assault, then they can dissociate what they experience from themselves as a kind of self-protection, a defense mechanism. This is how people deal with trauma, how they keep on living. They set their memories aside.”
“Oh, and you were told all this by a pair of psychiatrists!” Catalina was getting increasingly angry.
“Yes, Mama, I was told this by two reputable and fairly famous psychiatrists. This is exactly what happened to you. You were raped and your reaction was to deny the existence of the rape, causing a disconnect in your mind.”
“Marvin’s lying! He lied to you!” Catalina shouted.
“No, he didn’t. I swear. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
“You said that your mother was raped,” Fernando said, looking very serious.
“Yes. Marvin thought he knew who did it. You were at the Pradera de San Isidro, and he went into the trees because he needed to throw up. He saw a couple on the ground. The woman was shouting. He went over and saw a man on top of my mother, and she asked him for help … the man who was raping her fled when he heard someone coming, just did up his trousers and ran away. Marvin found my mother with her skirt undone, her stockings ripped, her underwear pulled down. She was crying and in a state of shock. He tried to get her to stand up, but she couldn’t move. He didn’t feel that well himself, and stayed there for a few minutes trying to get her to calm down. Then you came along, Fernando, and you saw them. You thought that my mother had been seduced by Marvin, that they were doing what they both wanted to do. You saw them sitting on the ground, her in a daze with her clothes all disheveled, and him with her in his arms.”
Fernando took Catalina’s trembling hand. Asunción, Isabel, and Petra sat in silence, not daring to move or speak in the face of Adela’s narrative.
“Who was it, who did it?” Fernando asked, afraid of what the answer might be.
Adela took out the tape recorder and turned it on. For a few seconds, they listened in silence to the voice of the man confessing his crime. Catalina started to tremble even more.
“Antoñito Sánchez, Don Antonio’s son. He raped my mother.”
“No … No … No!” Catalina was screaming now.
She stood, but suddenly fainted. Fernando was the first to help her. Catalina took a few seconds to open her eyes, and then curled into the fetal position, giving little shouts of pain.
Adela went over to the telephone. She called Dr. Fuentes, asking him to come at once, just as they had agreed.
Fernando managed to pick Catalina up, although she refused to move. He put her on the sofa and Petra made her drink some water. Asunción was very upset and held tight to her daughter’s hand as she cried. As for Isabel, she looked worriedly at both Fernando and Catalina, afraid that her son was suffering a shock as well.
The only one who seemed to be calm – although in truth she was very far from calm – was Adela. She knew she had no other choice. Dr. Fuentes had warned her of what her mother’s reaction might be.
When Dr. Fuentes arrived, Catalina was convulsing, crying, and murmuring words he did not understand.
The doctor gave her an injection; she relaxed and became drowsy.
“We have to take her to the hospital,” he said.
“Why?” Asunción asked in distress.
“Are you her mother?” Dr. Fuentes said, looking sympathetically at this elderly woman.
“Yes …”
“Your daughter needs treatment to help her face up to what Adela told her. She has kept herself free from trauma for years by using dissociation techniques. She’s suffered from what we call Dissociative Amnesia, which has stopped her from remembering what happened to her on the night she was raped. She has to get better, and to do that, she needs to accept the truth; she has to travel from grief to pain in order to overcome it. It won’t be easy, but we’ll help her manage.”
“Where are you going to take her?” Doña Asunción said, scared for her daughter.
“To a hospital, at least for a few days. Then she can come home and continue with the treatment that might help her face up to reality. But now we need to take her to the hospital. I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No … please … let me take her … Do you have a car?” Fernando asked.
“Yes …” the doctor replied.
“Please, take her in your car. I’ll come down with you and travel with her. An ambulance would be worse … I’m sure of that.”
Several days passed since Catalina had gone to the hospital. Days during which Fernando felt the void caused by her absence. Days which held more silence than words.
That Sunday afternoon, Fernando was reading while Isabel pretended to read but was in fact looking at her son. It was easy for her to see the child that he had once been in this gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair and wrinkles at the corner of his mouth. She knew that her son was suffering. The day before he had called Sara, the owner of the bookshop. She was in Alexandria, apparently. He didn’t know what she had said, but Isabel had seen Fernando’s face form a hard mask.
When she asked if Sara had given him some bad news, he said nothing, but put on his overcoat and left. He came back a couple of hours later. He didn’t say where he had been, and she knew that she shouldn’t ask, because the suffering in her son’s face left her no need for questions. He had barely spoken since then, and had no appetite.
She was worried that he would go back to Paris, but above all, that he would do so without explaining why he had left all those years before.
She had spent days trying to pluck up the courage to ask him, but the words caught in her throat. She decided that she could no longer avoid the conversation, for all her worry about the effect it would have on her son.
“Tell me the truth, Fernando. Did you leave here just to help Catalina, so that her parents didn’t have to be ashamed at her pregnancy? If you’re going to lie, don’t say anything. I won’t say that you owe me the truth, but I’d like there to be nothing left between us, and I’d like to be able to understand you. Your absence has been so harsh, I couldn’t understand it … The fact that you wouldn’t let me know where you were, where you were living …”
He looked her straight in the eyes, holding out his hand to pull her down next to him.
“I’ll tell you the truth. It will be hard for me, Mother, because I don’t want to cause you any pain, and I’m afraid you won’t understand me. But I will do it, and I ask you to forgive me for what I did, and for my disappearance.”
Isabel smiled slightly and squeezed his hand.
“I left because I killed two men, two of the men who killed my father. Do you remember Roque, the ugly-faced prison guard? The one who stepped on Father’s glasses when they fell to the ground, the one who didn’t give him our letters, who laughed at the prisoners? His son was a soldier, Saturnino Pérez, and he was in the firing squad. I … I felt a hatred for them that I couldn’t control. They killed my father, they killed him for his loyalty to the Republic. Every day that passed, I hated them more and more. They weren’t happy with having defeated the Republic; once they’d won the war, they seized their chance to exact their revenge on the losers with unusual cruelty. They’d won, so why shed more blood? I was raging, and I needed to take revenge for my father’s death.”
His mother’s gaze twisted his soul within him. He put his fingers to her lips to stop her speaking, not until he had finished.
“If I’d told you I was going to take my revenge, you would never have let me do it. You would have tried to convince me not to, and I would have obeyed you. That’s why I didn’t tell you, Mother. Catalina and Eulogio knew what I was going to do, and Catalina gave me her uncle’s pistol; she made me promise to take her with me in exchange. I resisted, but she held firm and I finally gave in. I’ve told you how we got to Lisbon, and then to Alexandria, the years we spent in Paris … And now you know why I left, and why I didn’t write to you, and why I didn’t want you to know where I was … I was scared that the authorities would connect me to the two murders, that they’d arrest me … that you would lose more and more, first your husband and then your son. But I didn’t only kill those two men … I killed two others. A Gestapo agent and a Nazi war criminal. The circumstances I was in forced my hand. Forgive me, Mother, forgive me.”
Isabel was sitting stock still, as if all the movements and sounds of her body had frozen solid. She took a few seconds to react.
“Oh. ‘You shall not kill, Fernando, you shall not kill.’ You remember? Your father told you that no one is ever the same after having killed, even if it is for a just cause. Your father wouldn’t have wanted you to live with this … with the weight of having taken other people’s lives. ‘You shall not kill’ was what he said when he came back from the front. Oh, Lord, how much he would have suffered if he’d known what you did!”
They both broke into tears, without embracing one another, without knowing how to console one another. Then Isabel wiped her tears away with a handkerchief and stroked her son’s face.
“Mother, not a single night has gone by when I haven’t seen the faces of Roque and Saturnino Pérez. I’ve had no peace since that day.”
“I understand. You feel guilty.”
“No … no … I don’t ….”
She shook her head. She knew that conscience does exist, even if we wish we could ignore it.
“I forgive you, my son. I forgive you. But you will have to ask God for forgiveness one day.”
“I’m not a believer, Mother, and Father wasn’t either.”
She nodded.
“Even so … One day, Fernando, do it.”
She got up and left him alone in the room. They both needed some time to themselves.
Fernando wanted to rid his head of his father’s words, the ones his mother had brought back into his mind: “You shall not kill, Fernando, you shall not kill.”
Roque and Saturnino came to visit him in the night, breaking his sleep. When dawn came, he woke suddenly, feeling a pressure in his chest. All was still.
After a while, he got up to get a drink of water and heard a murmur coming from his mother’s room.
“Mother? Are you all right?”
He opened the door and saw her lying on the floor with her eyes open. He cried out, then bent down, picked her up, and put her on her bed. She calmed down when she heard him speak.
“I’m not feeling well … my stomach hurts, and I want to be sick … I wanted to go to the kitchen, but I fell over and couldn’t get back up.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make you a chamomile tea, that’ll settle your stomach. Just lie there, and I’ll be along in a moment.”
He went to the kitchen to boil some water. Then he got down the box where his mother kept the herbal teas. He made chamomile tea with a little sugar.
When he came back to the room, his mother was still lying in the same spot, immobile, her eyes looking into nothingness. Fernando dropped the teacup and went over to the bed. He sat next to her and closed her eyes, then put her head back on the pillow and sat still, waiting as the heat left his mother’s body.
He cried as he spoke to her and asked her forgiveness.
He didn’t need the doctor to tell him that his mother’s heart had broken. He had broken her heart. He had killed his mother by confessing his own past crimes. Now he had a new victim to add to his list.
For an instant he wished he could believe in God, because then he would think that his mother and father were together again. But rationality stopped him from finding a way past his pain.
They buried her the next day. They didn’t tell Catalina, because she wouldn’t have been able to bear it, and wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing Fernando cry.
He locked himself away, unable to speak, unable to allow himself to be consoled.
He didn’t dare close his eyes, because if he did so, then he saw his mother’s face, and heard his father’s words: “You shall not kill, no, you shall not kill.”
Adela forced him to come back to reality, coming to his house every day and sitting with him in silence until, little by little, she was able to get a few words out of him. And one morning, when she came to find him and take him for a walk, he said: “I’m going back to Paris.”
Adela asked him to wait until Catalina left the hospital, and that if her mother wanted to come with him to Paris, she would convince her that she should stay in Madrid.
“She needs someone to look after her, my grandmother and my great-aunt will do it, and I will too. I’ve decided to stay in Madrid. I’m going to write about Spain for the newspaper. We’ve come to an agreement already.”
Fernando accepted the idea and waited until the day that Dr. Fuentes said that Catalina could leave the hospital.
Fernando went to pick her up. Catalina had asked him to come alone. She wanted to speak with him with no one around.
He found her dressed and talking to Dr. Fuentes.
“We’ve agreed that we’ll see each other two days a week at my office. But she’s much better. I’ve said she can go home.”
She smiled scornfully but nodded. She had lost weight, and the medication seemed to make her particularly vague.
She held Fernando’s arm. They walked to the elevator, and she didn’t smile until she had left the hospital behind her.
“Together again …” she said.
“That’s how it has to be,” he replied.
“I want to say something … I don’t know if you’ll be angry…”
“Of course not! You can say what you want.”
“I’ve thought about it … a lot … Not just about what happened, but about my whole life, with the doctor, and … well, I’ve come to a decision …”
“You want to stay in Madrid. You’re not coming back to Paris with me. Is that it?”
“How did you know?”
“Because I know you as well as you know me. And I understand you. It’s the right thing to do. You have your mother here, your aunt … they’ll look after you. You need them to look after you, you need a family. Adela is happy because she has a family at last, she loves her grandmother and her great-aunt. She’s very good friends with Petra.”
“And you? I don’t want you to go, Fernando.”
“I have to go, Catalina, there’s nothing left for me here. I’m very old, and I wouldn’t find any work. How would I live?”
“Stay here, Fernando … I … I don’t know how to live without you.”
“We have to learn to live without one another. It’ll take a few months, but you’ll hardly miss me after a while. You have your mother, your aunt, your daughter …”
Asunción opened the door and gave Catalina a hug. The two of them made an effort to hold back their emotions. Adela hugged her as well, and Petra struggled to get into the hug too.
Adela said she would cook “something French.”
They laughed and enjoyed the meal, but more than anything, they felt that Catalina had returned from the shadows of the trauma that had affected her for so many years now.
After the meal, Fernando got ready to leave.
“I need to finish packing. My train leaves at seven o’clock. A good thing that the station’s close,” he said.
Catalina walked over to Fernando and hugged him, almost despairingly.
“Don’t go … please stay here … I can’t bear it …”
Asunción let out a little sob, and Petra tried to contain herself.
“I can’t … you know that I can’t … I’ve got the bookshop … one day it’ll be mine … I came to an agreement with Sara …”
“Please, I’m begging you!” Catalina’s grip was so firm that Fernando couldn’t break away.
“I’ll come and see you, and you’ll come to see me in Paris … you can all come … that’s it … all of you, come to see me …”
“Fernando, don’t go!”
“Mother, please, don’t make this difficult,” Adela said to Catalina.
“I have to say something … I … I didn’t say it this morning, but I’ll say it now … we can get married. Stay here. We’ll get married and stay together. You always wanted that, and I didn’t know it, but I only ever loved you …” Catalina waited, smiling slightly.
Fernando stood still. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t even feel. He had waited all his life for Catalina to say that she loved him. But her words meant nothing to him now. He would have given anything to have heard them half a lifetime ago, but when he looked at her now, all he felt was tenderness, nothing more. He loved her with all his soul, but it was a love that had no room for anything but pure affection.
“We’ll see each other soon, I promise,” was all he felt able to say.
“So … it’s over between us …” Catalina murmured.
“No, never, I could never leave you, because it would be like leaving myself. And now I must go back to Paris, and I promise we’ll see each other soon. I’ll call you every day.”
He left the dining room, hearing Catalina’s desperate shouts behind him.
“Oh, God! What have I done all these years! How could I have done what I did! How could I have treated Fernando like that!”
“Mama, calm down … let him go to Paris … Fernando loves you, he’s never loved anyone else. He needs to put himself together, like you have put yourself together, like I have put myself together. It’s difficult for all of us to deal with: how do you think I feel? I thought that Marvin was my father, and I wanted Fernando to be my father, and my real father turned out to be someone I can only hate. I’ve lost the father I always wanted to have.”
Adela tuned away so her mother wouldn’t see her cry. She knew that they had both lost Fernando forever.
Fernando was almost done packing when Adela rang the doorbell.
“I’ll take you to the station,” she said, without giving him the chance to protest.
“And your mother?”
“Asunción and Petra are trying to calm her down.”
“You should have stayed with her.”
“I needed to be with you, to say goodbye … I’m afraid, Fernando, afraid that you’ll be gone forever. Tell me the truth: why are you going to Paris?”
“Because there’s nothing left for me here, and there are still poets to discover in Paris. I wouldn’t be able to make a living in Madrid, but in Paris there’s the bookshop. It’ll be mine one day, but even if that weren’t the case, I could still carry on editing poetry there regardless. Sara needs me; she’s very old.”
“You love her a great deal.”
“Yes, she’s looked after me like a mother, but without imposing herself, without my realizing. She’s always protected me. Ever since Benjamin died, she’s been alone. I’m the only one left.”
“You know … maybe you’ll be annoyed to hear this, but I thought that maybe you were leaving because of Zahra … I know she means a lot to you.”
Fernando stroked Adela’s face before replying.
“Zahra’s dead. She died a couple of days ago. Sara called me from Alexandria to tell me. A heart attack.”
“I … I didn’t know she was sick.”
“Her heart was weak. She forbade Sara from telling me anything. And so now you know, I’m not leaving your mother for another woman, if that’s what was bothering you.”
“I’m sorry.” Adela looked down at the ground.
“Don’t apologize, there’s no need.”
“My mother loves you, Fernando, and she has always loved you, but she was ill, and she’s been sick all these years without knowing it, without us realizing. I’ll never forgive Marvin and Farida for allowing my mother to destroy her own life, and your life, and almost my life as well.”
He said nothing. All he did was close his suitcase.
The train was waiting on the platform. The passengers were getting on and heading to their respective compartments. Adela helped him find a place for his suitcase, and then grasped him by the arm.
When they heard the first whistle, they hugged and Adela burst into tears.
He helped her down onto the platform, then got back on the train and leaned out of the window to say goodbye. They held hands. The train started moving and Adela tried to hold Fernando’s hand for a few seconds longer.
“Tell me the truth, and don’t lie to me. Are you coming back?”
“No, I won’t come back … I’ll die in Paris.”