One in the morning. It’s raining. My tiny room catches all the noises from the neighborhood. Really fierce depression this evening, and tremors. I’m not going to drink again. I’ve got to learn to say no to Jimmy’s box wine.
First day of work yesterday. And last: I quit after two hours, I didn’t even make it through the day. I didn’t come to Barcelona to serve nachos and guacamole. I didn’t leave my family just to put up with people treating me like an underdeveloped cockroach because the food’s too spicy. Who am I trying to kid? I didn’t come because I wanted to. The doctoral plans were just an excuse to be with Juan Pablo.
Maybe it’s time to accept that being here makes no sense. To take the money Juan Pablo’s offering me and change my flight. There’s no way I can make it to the end of the month. Not financially, not mentally. Tomorrow, or rather today, later, I’m going to call him.
Two awful days. Terrible insomnia. Two days of not being able to summon up the nerve to call Juan Pablo because I can’t swallow my pride. Because I’m devastatingly scared of hearing his voice, in the same phone booth. The big thing that’s changed is that I’ve stopped being the dummy from the telenovela, the idiot, and now I’m a poor jilted maiden from one of those country songs. And drunk. All I do is sit in the Plaza del Sol drinking with Jimmy. Checking my email a couple times a day. Eating (when I remember to). I don’t read anything. I feel like a burden’s been lifted off my back.
Yesterday Gabriele came back from Rome.
‘You ought to give yourself a shower, gorgeous,’ he said when he saw me.
Or, rather, when he smelled me.
9 p.m. and the fear’s still in my body, I can’t calm down. I feel like my nib is short of air, like my writing’s suffocating. But now’s not the moment to start making literature. Even my eyelashes are trembling.
It must have been five in the afternoon and I was at the square, sitting on the ground with Jimmy, when I saw a police car stop on one of the side streets. I saw a few squatters slip away, a black man offering passersby bootleg movies, a German couple who sometimes get very violent shooting up heroin. I could have gotten up, I could have walked calmly home and maybe nothing would have happened. I stayed sitting where I was, not reacting, because I’d come to a mistaken conclusion: this had nothing to do with me. In truth it wasn’t even a conclusion, it didn’t even occur to me. The bad habit of not being in the habit of getting into trouble with the police. I presumed that raid, if you can call an action carried out by just two cops a raid, must have been to seize drugs. But the two cops crossed the square, making straight for Jimmy. Straight for us, I mean.
They were a man and a woman. The policeman called Jimmy by his full name, which he had written down in a notebook, like in the movies, and asked him for his papers. Jimmy, snorting, handed him a piece of cardboard that wasn’t even laminated. With a photo of him from a million years ago where he had short hair and looked like a student of business admin. He said it was his Italian ID. While the policeman checked the information on the little card, the woman clocked my presence. The fact that I was with Jimmy.
‘Papers,’ she said to me.
I took my passport out of one of the inside pockets of my overcoat. I don’t normally carry it around with me, for fear of losing it, but this morning I was absolutely resolved to call Juan Pablo and thought that at the offices of the airline they might ask me for it to change my flight. (I didn’t call him, needless to say, my determination evaporated no sooner than I’d crossed the square.) When the officer had taken my passport, she interrupted her colleague, who had started questioning Jimmy about his registration, telling him that he was required to register.
‘She’s Mexican,’ she told him, in Catalan.
It sounded like an accusation. She handed my passport over to her colleague as if it was evidence of a crime. The sequence of actions suggested the man was her boss, as if there was some hierarchical connection between them. And if there wasn’t they were just behaving in accordance with the roles of machista supremacy.
‘Do you live in Barcelona, Valentina?’ asked the policeman, flicking through all the pages in my passport.
He was looking for the immigration entry stamp. I said yes, for a bit. Just three months. That I’d arrived at the end of October. Finally the officer found the stamp and checked the date.
‘Are you registered with the municipality?’ he asked me.
I said yes, but not at my current address, that I’d previously been living in a different apartment and hadn’t yet made the change.
‘What’s the address where you’re registered?’ asked the policewoman, with pen and notebook, ready to note it down.
I said it was Julio Verne, number 2. The policeman closed my passport and put Jimmy’s ID inside. The two officers exchanged a look. Both of these actions alarmed me.
I started to tremble.
‘In apartment 6D?’ said the policewoman, pronouncing it parmen.
I sobered up in an instant.
‘We seem to have a motive,’ said the policeman to the woman, both of them staring hard at us.
‘What?’ said Jimmy.
‘It’s just that your new Mexican girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend has reported you for threatening him,’ he replied. ‘The plaintiff, Juan Pablo Villalobos Alva, identified his assailant as Giuseppe Colombo.’
A burning hole opened up in my belly.
‘Threatening behavior in a public place,’ the agent went on. ‘The plaintiff was walking down Calle Vallirana on Tuesday the 4th at 10:30 p.m. when he was accosted by the accused.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ said Jimmy.
‘Why did you leave the apartment on Calle Julio Verne?’ the policewoman asked me.
The hole started spilling lava down toward my legs.
‘Did you and Juan Pablo have a fight?’
Somebody put a rock inside my head, in the place my brain was supposed to be.
‘Don’t answer,’ Jimmy said quickly. ‘I know the law, man, don’t say a thing. At that time on Tuesday I was here in the square,’ he went on, now also speaking to the police officers, ‘I’ve got masses of witnesses. We could report you for slander, we’re going to report you for harming our image with our friends here and the people in the neighborhood.’
I stared at him, amazed.
‘I studied law in Bologna, man,’ he said to me, ‘I’m a lawyer.’
‘Is this a joke?’ said the policeman.
‘Am I laughing?’ replied Jimmy.
The policeman tutted loudly and looked over to the other sides of the square where those squatters who hadn’t slipped away were bunched together to comment on what was happening.
‘The things we’ve got to put up with,’ he said to his colleague, ‘Jesus, these Italians are really something.’
‘And you lot are fascists,’ said Jimmy. ‘And racists. You’re hassling my friend because she’s Latina. You stole all the gold from the Americas and now you complain about immigration. Nazi fucks.’
‘Whoa there, pal,’ said the officer, ‘you’d better shut your mouth if you don’t want us to arrest you right now.’
‘These ones are Mossos, man,’ Jimmy said to me, ‘the ones from the Catalan police, they’re the worst.’
‘I’m being serious, man, shut your fucking mouth,’ said the officer.
Then he asked me if I had a return ticket to Mexico. I said yes.
‘For what date?’ he asked.
I said it was for January 27th. He asked me to show it to him and I said I had it back at the apartment where I was living.
‘Have you registered at the consulate?’ he said.
I said no, I didn’t know what that meant.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘since you haven’t updated your local registration, and you also haven’t done your consular registration, we’re going to have to accompany you back to your apartment. We need to confirm your place of residence.’
Jimmy was about to say something but the officer cut him off:
‘This is for you.’
He held out a sheet of paper.
‘It’s got the date, time and place where you’ve got to show up,’ he said. ‘If you don’t come, we’ll come and fetch you. A notification’s been sent to the Italian police, too.’
‘Here it is,’ I said to the police officers when we were outside the building on Calle de la Virtud. ‘Apartment 4A,’ I said.
‘We need to go inside,’ said the policewoman, ‘we need to check you really live here.’
‘You go in,’ the policeman said to her, ‘I’ll wait for you out here. I’ll go get a coffee.’
The woman accepted his suggestion as if it was a matter of obeying orders. The two of us went into the building and started climbing the stairs.
‘That’s the problem with Gràcia,’ said the officer on the landing of the second floor, which is really the third if you count the mezzanine. ‘It’s a really cute neighborhood but the houses are old and they don’t have elevators. At least you get your exercise,’ she added.
I said nothing. I didn’t know if they were now going to go all bad cop (the one who’d gone for a coffee) / good cop, or if the policewoman really was making an effort to be nice, to show her empathy, as if now her colleague was no longer around it was just a matter between us girls. I was so scared I decided to follow Jimmy’s advice and keep my mouth shut, not so much because I trusted his legal counsel, but out of a basic survival instinct telling me that if I did nothing, things couldn’t get worse.
Finally we reached the fourth floor, with me somewhat breathless as always, and the police officer cool and glowing, she was in great shape. I noticed what she looked like for the first time while I recovered and rummaged for my keys in my overcoat pockets. A redhead (she’d taken off her cap when she came into the building). Olive-colored eyes. Unremarkable features. Cheekbones dotted with tiny, almost imperceptible freckles.
I turned the key in the lock, pushed the door and immediately heard Gabriele’s voice.
‘Oh, you’re back,’ he said, ‘hey, let me introduce you to the Brazilians, they’re back from Morocco.’
The two backpacks were still dumped in the middle of the living room and the Brazilian couple were drinking beer on the sofa.
‘Hi,’ I said.
The three of them saw the officer who was following me in and for a moment the effect of the police uniform produced total silence.
‘Afternoon,’ said the policewoman. ‘Just a routine matter,’ she added.
Then she asked me, in a kindergarten teacher’s voice, to show her my plane ticket. I went into my room to fetch it. While I rummaged among the papers in the bureau I heard the officer saying it looked like it was going to rain. The Brazilians agreed. Gabriele said it might look that way, but it never rained in Barcelona.
‘There’s just this damn humidity,’ he said, then apologized for having said damn.
‘No problem,’ said the policewoman, ‘complaining about the weather isn’t against the law yet.’
I came out of the room with the piece of paper folded in four. The officer looked it over. The Brazilians took advantage of the silence to drink little sips of their beer. The officer folded the sheet of paper up again, and handed it back to me along with my passport (I hadn’t even noticed they hadn’t returned it yet).
‘Everything seems to be in order,’ she said.
She said goodbye. At the door, she asked me to step outside a moment. I walked out and pulled the door closed behind me.
‘Listen,’ the policewoman said, her voice a high-school teacher’s now, ‘for the moment there’s no problem, but if the Italian squeals or if your ex-boyfriend finds out you’re going to be in for it. Giuseppe’s summons is for March. By that time you’ll be in Mexico. If you’re really planning to use that ticket. My advice, if you’ll allow me, is that you go tomorrow first thing to your country’s consulate and register with them. So they know how to track down your family if anything were to happen. Keep out of trouble, as these things never end well. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. It looks like just some petty little jealousy right up until some piece of shit loses his mind. I’ve seen it many times before. And on the 27th you get on the plane. There are people who stay as illegals for years and nobody notices. That’s not an option for you. If you don’t go, on that same day, the 27th, there’ll be an expulsion order for you.’
She put her hand on my shoulder. I said nothing, though I felt uncomfortable, as if she wanted to make me feel totally helpless. And she needn’t have bothered, I was totally helpless already, I was basically getting a doctorate in that.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘is there anyone you trust you can call if things turn sketchy?’
Still I kept quiet.
‘Man,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what things are like in your country, but I’m guessing you’ve seen the news here, we’ve got cases of violence against women happening every day. You’d be amazed if you knew how the stories start that end up like that.’
She was so insistent I ended up wondering whether it was possible, in some parallel universe, that good policemen might actually exist. Or good policewomen, to be more accurate. This one, at least, did seem genuinely concerned.
‘No,’ I said, finally, ‘I don’t know a lot of people.’
She took out a notebook and jotted down her name and a couple of phone numbers. On top of everything, she was called Laia.
‘Here,’ she said, tearing out the page and handing it to me. ‘Call the bottom number in case of emergency. The other’s my cell, you can call me anytime you like if you think there’s something I can do to help.’
I went back inside the apartment, crossed the living room without looking over to where Gabriele was waiting for an explanation, and shut myself in my room.
I stayed shut up in my room until nine-thirty because I wanted to avoid running into Gabriele, who normally leaves the house before nine. I didn’t hear the Brazilians leave, but I had to go out because I was practically peeing myself. I opened the door and was hit by the smell of coffee and of butter in the frying pan. The Brazilians invited me to join them for breakfast. They were so insistent I couldn’t say no.
‘We did not get a chance to present us yesterday,’ he said, supplementing his bad Spanish with his better English. ‘She is Andreia. My name is Paulo.’
He emphasized the Spanish pronunciation of his consonants as if afraid I might think he was Argentinian. We exchanged a pair of kisses and I apologized for looking a bit odd (and smelling a bit odd).
‘I’m going through a confused phase, where hygiene is concerned,’ I said.
They laughed heartily, and I saw their beautiful teeth. In order to make me feel good, or rather, to make me not feel bad, they showed me their arms and legs, covered in insect bites (and tattoos). The bedbugs had feasted on them in Morocco. He’s dark and she’s very fair, with that milky coloring that other people feel sorry for on the beach. They must be over twenty-five and under thirty. While they spread a baguette with butter they told me they’d come to Barcelona to do a master’s. They’d arrived at the end of September last year.
He’s an architect, and even though he’d only come over to study, within two weeks he’d already gotten himself a job in construction.
‘The firm builds traffic circles where there’s nothing else around,’ he said, laughing. ‘We did a traffic circle in a town near Alicante and there are no roads to get to it. So what you’re left with is a gigantic sculpture that cost a pretty penny. All paid for with European money.’
She’s a physiotherapist. She’s studying for a master’s in kinesiology. When we sat down at the table she lit a joss stick. I was slightly offended, though I acknowledge that instead of taking offense what I should really do is take a bath. Neither of them mentioned what had happened the previous night, nor did they insist I tell them about my life or the reasons I’d come to Barcelona. I liked that. They contented themselves with telling me about their vacation in Morocco, they showed me photos on a laptop, and we laughed at the close-ups they’d taken of the bedbugs in the mattress of a guest house in Tangiers.
‘Pesky little bed-buggers,’ I said, just a silly bit of wordplay, but which they loved and repeated over and over.
They laughed a lot, each time revealing their beautiful teeth. When we finished I offered to clear the table and do the washing up. They accepted without making me think I owed them anything. I really liked them. Before heading out to do their things they warned me not to move the backpacks. Not to touch them. The backpacks were still dumped in the middle of the living room.
‘We’re going to take all the clothes out to wash in hot water,’ said Paulo.
‘And we’ve got to chuck the backpacks,’ said Andreia.
‘Bed-buggers,’ they said, in chorus, laughing again.
They were so happy I was starting to hate them a bit.
Having breakfast with the Brazilians did me good, sticking my confused little head back into normality, remembering that outside this deep hole I’d gotten myself into there’s a world where people are happy with their perfect teeth. I waited for the bathroom to be free and went in, intending to take a shower. I hadn’t counted on the Brazilians having used up all the hot water. Five days without a bath and when I finally decide to do it there’s only freezing cold water. I scrubbed my armpits, between my legs, my face. I put on clean clothes. I brushed my teeth furiously. Then I spent a little while taking the fluff off my overcoat with the brush I found in the living room. I needed to talk to Jimmy.
I went down to the square at midday and he wasn’t there yet. I took advantage of his absence to stop in at the call shop to go online to look into this consular registration thing, which is really called ‘consular matriculation’. I made a note of the address of the consulate and their office hours so I could go on Monday. Truth was, that business yesterday had left me very scared.
When I came back to the square I found Jimmy where he always was, as he always was, as though nothing had happened. He patted the ground with his right hand, inviting me to sit. I stood still, in front of him.
‘Are you off to tea with the queen, girl?’ he said. ‘Where are you headed looking like that?’
‘Did you hit him?’ I asked, with no preamble and no beating around the bush.
‘Who?’ he answered. ‘Your jerk ex-boyfriend? I didn’t do anything to him, man, only what you asked me to. I gave him one hell of a fright, the jerk isn’t only a jerk, he’s also a chicken, what kind of dickhead would go to the police because some guy’s given them a fright?’
‘I didn’t ask you to… ’ I said.
‘To what?!’ shouted Jimmy before I was able to complete my phrase. ‘What’s this now? You’re going to start on how the whole thing was my idea now? I’m the only person defending you, man, all I need now is for you to turn against me. Don’t feel bad about it, you’re screwed while this jerk is on top of the world, it’s not right, did you know the asshole’s bought himself a new coat? Another coat just as sweet, just as expensive, where does he get the cash, huh? You’re right to want the fucker to be given a fright, don’t feel bad about it.’
His face had turned the color of box wine and a vein in his neck was about to explode.
‘I’m also right to be asking you for explanations, Jimmy,’ I said, ‘I’ve got trouble with the police now.’
‘So that’s what this is? The Mossos scared you? You’re going to fuck me over just to get free of the Mossos? You’re a fucking traitor, man. Screw you, man.’
He drank a long swig of beer, avoiding my eyes, his gaze lost on the ground of the square.
‘How did you find him?’ I said.
‘Jesus, man, it was the easiest thing in the world, you don’t stop talking about him every second of the fucking day, you told me the address where he lived loads of times, you showed me photos that day you brought your laptop computer, don’t you remember?’
‘You should have told me,’ I said, ‘you can’t just go doing something like that and not tell me.’
‘I forgot, man!’ he replied. ‘You think the only thing I’m worrying about is how to carry out your sentimental revenge? I’ve got shitloads of things to think about. You think I spend the whole day in the square doing nothing, but you don’t know me, you don’t know who I am. Besides, how was I to know that stupid son of a bitch was going to go to the police? I wasn’t expecting that, man, honestly I don’t know how you could go out with that jerk. Besides his whole fucking face is covered in marks, man, he’s seriously butt-ugly.’
‘I didn’t ask you to threaten him, Jimmy,’ I said. ‘I mean, yeah, of course we talked about it, but I was a total mess, you should have realized I didn’t mean it.’
‘You didn’t mean it?’ he said. ‘Those Mossos really scared you that much? You Mexicans are really something, you know that, man? You don’t deserve Zapata. Pancho Villa invaded the US and now you lose your shit when you meet the Catalan police. And now you think you can show up disguised all fancy to bawl me out? You’ve even taken a shower to come over here and complain, you’ve showered so you could feel like you’re better than me, I know what that fascist mentality’s like. But who’s the only person who put up with your ass when you were totally reeking, man? Me, man! Me! Girl, you’re a coward. Forget that jerk, man, forget him, he’s a dick. He left you for a Catalan girl with crooked teeth, get over him already.’
‘Look who’s talking!’ I said. ‘You think I haven’t noticed why you’re always on your own in the square? Why you don’t have dogs and you’re always looking over at that group? Because, man, that girl left you, and she kept the dogs,’ I said, reaching my arm out to gesture toward the group of French squatters.
‘Don’t point, asshole!’ he shouted.
‘Am I wrong?’ I asked. ‘And you haven’t got the balls to go talk to her or to move off to some other square. And I bet you were even using me just to make her jealous.’
‘Shut up!’ he shouted. ‘You know what you should be doing instead of sticking your nose in where you’re not wanted? You should be asking yourself how that jerk managed to identify me and how the Mossos managed to figure out my name and know that I come to the Plaza del Sol. Now that really is weird. I’ve been thinking about it all night. Where’d they get my information? Something doesn’t add up, girl. But we’re not going to leave it at that. I’m going to investigate.’