Water poured down from the sky as if the clouds had agreed to flood every last street, making homeward journeys treacherous or impossible. The car that pulled up outside Central Repairs seemed to be in some distress. Jerónimo had watched it go haphazardly round the block several times looking for the garage, which had switched off its lights and closed for the day over an hour ago. After finally spotting the entrance, the driver sounded the horn, seemingly oblivious to what a shrill noise it made. Jerónimo turned the lights back on and shouted that he was coming. He was perfectly entitled not to open up - his colleagues had all gone home and he’d been waiting for the rain to ease off to get going himself – but he couldn’t just not help, especially not during a storm. Besides, the customer seemed somewhat desperate – or drunk, he thought with a wry smile.
By the time he reached the door, the driver had got out of the car and gone to stand under the awning by the entrance. A curtain of water separated Jerónimo from the woman.
She looked at him in the backlit doorway and was reminded of a man she’d met many years ago, so many years ago she couldn’t think where or when, as though another wall of water stood between her and her memories. She took a step forward, thinking about the tricks the mind can play when forced out of its comfort zone. She’d never been to the garage before, indeed it was the first time she’d ever been in a garage at all, the family chauffeur having always brought her car in for servicing, so she’d almost certainly never met the mechanic before, even if she felt like she had. She was doubtless just tired, and anxious too, for there was no telling whether he’d be prepared to help her at this time of night. She hoped he would at least let her use the telephone and wait in the dry until someone came to pick her up. She felt weak and unable to speak.
‘Just ask,’ her willpower encouraged her, ‘He’s bound to help.’
On the other side of the curtain Jerónimo looked back at the woman and saw the girl who’d abandoned him thirty years ago, leaving him with her daughter but nothing else to remember her by. He never did find out how Fernanda came to be in Serrano. Now she’d been brought back to him by the rain.
They stared at each other for a moment. Their thoughts took flight, met in the air, embraced, then moved apart, the distance between them having been overcome.
Then the rain stopped, the curtain went up and they became strangers again, a man and a woman meeting for the first time. She seemed unnerved by the situation, he looked delighted. She had turned off the main road and got lost among the backstreets, she told him. He felt strangely touched by this. She looked so familiar, perhaps a regular customer who came in on quiet days. He shook his head and went over to look at her car. She paced around nervously, saying she was sorry, she’d been at the wheel for several hours, she didn’t like to bother him at such an unsociable hour. She watched him fiddle skilfully under the bonnet with parts she didn’t know the name of.
He soon fixed the problem. It would have been unfair to delay her any further so he took out a map and showed her the way back to the main road. When she got out her purse to pay, a photo of a man and a boy fell out onto the desk.
‘My husband and my son,’ she said.
‘I have a daughter myself, though I haven’t seen her for many years,’ he said, unable to hide the regret in his voice.
‘Do you still hear from her?’
‘Oh yes. All the time.’
‘I had a daughter too, but she died.’ She said this without thinking and immediately wondered why she’d lied. But it was too late to contradict herself, and there was something that pleased her about what she’d said. What could possibly be pleasing about inventing a dead daughter? She felt faint. She would have to go and see the doctor again, perhaps she was suffering a relapse.
Jerónimo became concerned. He brought her a chair to sit down on.
‘It’s just a little dizziness. I must have been driving for too long, I can’t really remember.’
‘Sit here and rest for a while. Drink some water.’
When she felt ready, she filled out a cheque, got back in the car and drove away. The smile she gave Jerónimo when she left melted his heart. He stood there staring into space, then looked down at the cheque, made out in the name of Genoveva Luxemburgo. He smiled, amused at the power of his imagination, its ability to conjure things up whenever it wanted to. He logged the token sum he’d charged her in the ledger and stuck the cheque in his wallet.
He spent the rest of the night thinking about the charming woman who’d appeared to him in the rain. He gave thanks to the weather, to the poor sense of direction most women have, to cars that break down and to owners who forget to top their oil up. He revelled in the lingering scent of the woman’s perfume, sweeter than the smell of the river in Serrano. ‘Sweeter even, may the saints forgive me, than the smell of the spring,’ he said to himself. He went out for dinner and felt hungrier than he had done for a long time. This did not go unnoticed by the landlady of the restaurant where he took his meals. He felt like laughing, talking, loving, be it with others or on his own.
He missed his Fipa. He wasn’t sure why he’d lied to the customer who’d been so nice. Where could his daughter be?
No one had ever come to the village to ask about her after Fernanda left, nor had anyone – be they parents, a husband, or even Fernanda herself – had the decency to contact the family who’d saved her. Jerónimo had not, therefore, felt guilty about holding on to Filipa for seven years. In fact it was the best thing he’d ever done and now that he had more money and know-how he planned to try and get hold of her address abroad. The priest he’d dealt with had been transferred to another parish, nobody would tell him which one and he hadn’t had the means to make them talk. But he had some money now and he was ready to try again.
Genoveva got lost another half dozen times before finding the road home. She felt entranced, as delicate as the mist that hung in the air after the storm. From the moment the lights had gone on in the garage and the man had shouted that he was coming in his deep and reassuring voice, a jumble of elements, together and in isolation, had dissolved inside her and created a potent mix of emotions. It was a combination of the rain, the mechanic, his voice and vague flashbacks, images that suggested experiences she was unable to place or make sense of. But even before that, a memory of some kind had reverberated in her and made her turn into the neighbourhood in the first place, with the storm guiding or befuddling her, teasing her towards the garage. She’d never had much sense of direction, indeed her son liked to joke that she’d get lost in their house if it weren’t for her sense of smell. She’d always had a good nose and she did often use smells to orientate herself.
Though it was late and wet, and despite her tiredness, Genoveva was in no rush to get home. She felt intrigued by the keen intensity of the encounter she’d just experienced, the sense of a distant life that had come to her while lost in an unfamiliar part of town.
Many years ago, having failed in her efforts to rediscover what her nose suggested she’d lost, she’d decided that the smells that sometimes came to her only existed inside her head and that the strange sensations that accompanied them were products of her imagination. She sometimes felt like a scent herself, trying to escape from a perfume bottle. She’d ended up sealing the bottle in resignation, but now the feeling had returned, palpable and sensuous, and it seemed to be connected to the voice of the mechanic who’d helped her.
Her family would be worried about her being back so late. Since the plane crash, sudden storms had always had a destabilising effect on her, despite all the counselling. She never slept well during a storm. They gave her nightmares and she often cried out in the middle of the night, especially when the wind was strong.
Marriage had brought her many joys, not least the son she adored, and she still felt tenderness towards her husband. He’d stirred more affection in her than anyone else in her life, from their initial passion to the friendship that now remained. One day he’d said they needed more emotion in their lives, more surprises and fewer certainties; he thought they were too comfortable, able to read each other like a book, one with no twists or turns. They went their separate ways after that, but stayed friends. He obeyed the spirit of adventure that was in his blood, while she sat patiently waiting for things to happen to her.
She considered herself definitively beyond the stage of having intimate feelings, prior failures on that front having taken their toll. But now her nose was telling her that nothing was definitive, that chance encounters could turn a life on its head.
That evening she overheard her son trying to explain her current mental state to his father on the phone.
‘No, she’s not sick. It’s like she’s turned into the woman from the black and white film.’
She’d once told her son that she felt like a woman from a black and white film and he now brought this up whenever he thought she was acting strangely. He didn’t understand what she meant by it, but Sílvio did. Her husband had been there throughout her sickness and recovery. He knew a life lived in monochrome was not so much a life of suffering as one of feeling permanently drained. He also knew that her black and white moods were passing episodes and that after a few days her life would return to colour.
All the same, Genoveva went to see the doctor and began a series of consultations. She did not go back to see the mechanic, but one day they bumped into each other in a shopping centre. They recognised each other immediately and were soon drinking coffee together on the terrace like old friends.
But they struggled to find things to say. Her mind went blank while he was lost for words.
‘How’s the car been?’
‘Ah! Thank you again for your help that day.’
‘That night more like! It was quite a storm. I was worried about you when you left. You didn’t seem very well.’
‘It was just tiredness. Storms always make me feel exhausted, even before they come. But I got home fine.’
‘You never came back. Or rather I suppose you never got lost around there again. Do you know anyone in the neighbourhood?’ He found this a silly thing to say as soon as he’d said it. He tried something else: ‘How’s your son?’
‘Have you heard from your daughter lately?’
They’d spoken at the same time. They went quiet, suddenly nervous in front of one another.
‘He’s well.’
‘I have.’
A waiter came over to clear their table and she took the opportunity to stand up. He offered her his business card and she accepted it like a child being given a present.
Jerónimo was a nice name. Perhaps the longest name she’d ever pronounced. You started saying it and a whole week passed before you finished. She laughed at herself. She hadn’t played word games for a while, perhaps not since adolescence, indeed it was a long time since she’d felt so relaxed and self-assured to be making up nonsense inside her head. She wanted to see Jerónimo again, spend more time with him, at least long enough to pronounce every syllable in his name. When she got home she would call Paula, her godmother and confidante, to tell her about the mechanic and how they’d first met in a downpour.
She had his phone number now. It was December, she could call him to say Happy New Year. Or maybe she’d call him before that, to say Happy Christmas.
But before she had a chance, the doctor advised her to start counselling again. After just a few sessions it all came tumbling out: a teenage pregnancy; a complicated birth; a missing daughter; an unknown father. Everything came to her so fast her analyst feared a major relapse.
Genoveva gathered her strength and went to see her mother. She begged her to tell her everything she knew about what had happened to her. Joana saw that her daughter was in distress and feared a breakdown that might prove terminal. She told her the truth, or most of it. She said that actually yes, a girl had turned up at the house, about twenty-three years ago, claiming to be Genoveva’s daughter. But no, they hadn’t taken her seriously, it was obviously some kind of blackmail. Some peasant had apparently found Genoveva in the forest and rescued her, then looked after the child. But Genoveva hadn’t been away long enough to have fallen pregnant and given birth, so they threatened to call the police and the peasants took off. Genoveva thought of Roberto and admitted to her mother that she could have been pregnant by him at the time. Joana remembered Roberto and recalled that the little girl the priest had brought to the house had indeed been dark-skinned. But she chose not to tell Genoveva this.
Pedro San Martin was more understanding of his daughter’s plight and offered to help Genoveva track the girl down. He hired a private detective and suggested the search begin in Serrano. The detective soon reported back that Serrano was gone, but he was following up on a lead.
The whole process had begun with her visit to the garage. Genoveva wanted to go back and tell Jerónimo all about it, but what with her counselling sessions and the detective’s encouraging news, there simply wasn’t time. She decided to put the visit off until she had more concrete news to share with him.