When I enter the building that houses Godó Media, on Diagonal near Francesc Macià, they make me show ID and then give me a visitor’s pass. I leave behind the incessant roar of the Tuesday morning traffic and head down the hallway beneath the attentive gaze of a security guard who greets me with a lackadaisical nod. I soon realize that the attractive glass aesthetic of that modern building hides an entire world inside, just like the hospital where I work, except that here instead of medical staff and sick people there are mostly journalists. Journalists and sound technicians. Carla is a sound technician at a radio station. I never would have guessed that. Ever since I met her in the waiting room at the Hospital Clínic, I’ve been calling her the ballerina and imagining her gripping a barre and stretching her infinite legs out vertically, and then making flexible movements with her long, balanced body, spinning, her hair gathered up in a bun and her two small breasts, hard, like pure fibre. I’ve dreamt up festivals on a stage for her, with Mauro staring mouth agape, I’ve dressed her in a white tutu and covered her toes with blisters from the effort, with blood and sweat.
My stomach is queasy with the nervousness and shame of a little girl facing the monster under her bed. It’s a cautious, 219calculated shame. We’ve communicated curtly through WhatsApp, without saying much, and both of us avoided emojis and exclamation marks. They would be unbefitting to the situation, as well as to the man we both loved, who now conclusively belongs to both of us. There’s no longer any need for us to compete.
We agreed to meet on the fifth floor at eleven in the morning. She has a half-hour break between programmes but wrote “a quick half hour” and the adjective on the mobile screen made me imagine her naked, dropping white knickers with cartoon characters on them to the floor, skipping over to the shower and lathering up Mauro’s rejuvenated body with soapsuds as they cackle with laughter.
I climb up the five flights, reminding myself that I was the one who suggested getting together and that it’s too late to run away.
I see two men about my age laughing, talking about a third to whom they gifted a helicopter flight; from what they say, he was scared half to death. They’re dressed casually, they seem carefree, and give off an image of boys or men who will never grow up, with perfectly sculpted beards, wearing cologne and trainers, and draped in an insouciance shared by the young woman at the reception desk and all the employees milling around on that floor.
“Good morning. I’m here to see Carla.”
I realize I don’t know her surname and I leave the sentence hanging in the air. It’s not a problem, I’ll soon learn that she’s the only female sound technician on the staff. And 220that she has a slight speech impediment that affects her “r”s, as well as a slight tic in her left eye, almost imperceptible but constant. Now I can imagine her better with Mauro, those slight imperfections I didn’t notice at first glance must have gradually won him over, while I was immersed in dire patients and research articles.
“Hello, Paula.”
She comes out to reception and greets me in a serious tone, a wary shadow in her gaze. She asks for five minutes and then sends me into the recording studio. She moves quickly, like everything in this place. I follow her with the awkwardness of someone entering unknown territory. Carla’s index finger tells me to wait a second and I stand there like an idiot, my feet together and my hands in my jacket pockets. I want to leave. In a sudden frenzy a few days ago I thought it best to tidy everything up, prepare to close this chapter, get in touch with a ballerina who turned out not to be one and speak to her, but I’m not sure what I want to get out of it, and now the idea seems ridiculous. You’re already here, Paula, relax. You must be twice her age. But it is her audacious youth that makes me swallow hard and close my eyes for a moment. I take a breath while she sits in front of a mixing table filled with channels and flickering lights. In front of her is a large window onto the studio with guests speaking live to a famous journalist whose name I can’t remember. My nervousness puts incongruent ideas in my head, like taking his photo and sending it to my dad, but I refrain. Don’t be childish, Paula. I wither more and more as the moments pass. 221
“Fifteen seconds, the piece ends, you come in and introduce the advert, OK? Relax, I’ll edit it later.”
Carla speaks quickly into an internal microphone to the journalist, stands and sits back down again, types, tidies some papers with a nervous energy that sets me on edge and then, without taking her eyes off the inside of the studio, gets up from the swivel chair and does a countdown on her fingers that transforms her into the most powerful woman I’ve seen: five, four, three, two, one. The world stops.
Everything in our lives was so predictable, I think, hypnotized by her gesture: take out the rubbish when you leave, remember to buy water when you go past the supermarket, Sunday we can have lunch at my parents’ house, I have a migraine, maybe tomorrow. I no longer wore perfume except when we went out for dinner with friends, and he refused to throw out those loafers I couldn’t stand. It somehow seemed no man could resist this goddess in faded jeans and well-worn leather boots who counted down with her hands in the air. It wasn’t feasible that you could resist a woman like that. It just wasn’t an option.
She approaches me and suggests we leave through the same door through which we came in a moment ago. She takes me down the hall, skirting the recording studio, and I follow her like a frightened little dog. Hardly a trace remains of the confidence I had last night in front of the mirror, when I rehearsed a condescending speech, as if I somehow had the upper hand.
The views from up here are spectacular and the city, with 222its constant chaos, looks easy to arrange tidily; I begin to sense that everything would be simpler if I could manage to look at it from another perspective but, for the moment, every thought keeps leading me back to the same bewildered state.
We sit in a small room far from the din. There are only two armchairs, a round table with all of today’s newspapers and a machine with tea and coffee. She offers me a drink and makes two coffees before sitting down.
I look at her arse while her back is turned. Her jeans hug her butt with an almost unfair generosity, as if they’d been tailor-made to a standard of beauty we all helplessly admire. Despite her svelteness, there is a sensuality to her curves that makes her desirable. I think how lucky Mauro must have felt.
She sits down. She crosses her legs and sighs.
“How are you?” she asks in a wounded voice.
How is it possible I didn’t speak first? I’m paralysed.
“Getting by. And you?”
She lowers her gaze and focuses on her coffee. She slowly stirs the little plastic spoon and inhales noisily before speaking, her body widening as if an umbrella were opening in her ribs.
“Not so hot.”
Her response reminds me why I’m here and suddenly Mauro makes his presence known. Unconsciously I inch towards her like a mother concerned about her daughter’s delicate situation, and I put a hand on her thigh until her look makes it clear that she doesn’t appreciate it. I pull away brusquely.
“What did you want to talk about?” 223
For the first time I notice the tic in her eye. She contracts the lid involuntarily. It occurs to me that perhaps she hasn’t always had it, maybe it was brought on by the trauma of Mauro’s death. I quickly review the possible neurological disorders of the central nervous system. She isn’t a patient, for the love of God, Paula. Focus! I banish the thought but realize I’m lost.
“What did you say?” I ask nervously.
“Why did you want to meet up? Is there something you need?”
I think carefully before speaking. Yes. There is something I need. And I say it.
“I need to know when it all started.”
She sighs loudly and takes a sip of coffee.
“It all started here.” She nods, indicating the radio station in general. “Mauro and his partner Nacho came with a writer they were promoting.”
“That Russian woman?”
She nods. I remember the Russian woman and the days around her promotional visit. Mauro was so busy I hardly saw him, and incredibly excited.
“I had read her book and really enjoyed it. Normally it’s not something I do, but I wanted to chat to her and ask her to sign my copy…” She pauses, gathers her hair behind her head with one hand and places it to one side of her shoulder. “I speak Russian.”
She speaks Russian. Of course. That must have clinched it. Mauro must have melted instantly, despite her speech impediment. 224
I unfold calendar pages in my mind, trying to remember when that all happened, when he came home with the Russian woman’s novel hot off the press, happy as a kid with new shoes, and I start to feel panicky. It’s been almost a year since the accident and the past has already become unrecognizable. I stopped using a system of time divided up into months, weeks and days. Now it’s been reduced to the simple duality of before and after, and I shield myself behind my coral reef. Everything that happened before seems as remote as if it had happened to someone else. Time has blurred it all like a wet blot on a watercolour.
She realizes I’m blocked but does nothing.
“Did he tell you from the beginning that he was in a relationship?” I manage to articulate the question.
“I figured it out because he didn’t ask me anything about my personal life.”
His typical avoidance, I think, and smile sarcastically.
“I never asked him to leave you, but his mind was so set…”
Her gaze drifts out over endless Barcelona, past the Diagonal, and I want to shake her, make her spit out all the details.
“What do you mean?” I say with feigned calmness.
“Just that, that he quickly decided to move forward with the wedding, and that was when he told me that he had to tell you first, leave home and make sure that you were OK.”
My stomach churns. It stings as if I’d been punched. I’d guessed something from the conversations on his mobile, but they hadn’t gone that far. The word wedding hits my forehead, 225right between the eyes, and gives way to a headache that I know will become intense pain and nausea if I don’t take a pill quickly. I look at her hands in fear and see no ring.
“Did you get married?” I ask in a reedy voice.
“No. We didn’t have time.” She gets choked up. She brings her hands to her face.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, but it’s not true, I’m not sorry at all.
“We already had a date set at Santa Maria del Mar.” She pauses to take a breath. She keeps her gaze on the horizon. A church wedding. He wanted to get married and maybe have the child I never gave him. Her eyes are flooded and a tear slips, almost like an invertebrate being, down her face. Her cheeks are pink from the heating, the same cheeks that Mauro must have covered in clandestine kisses that would later become public, permitted, innocuous. Those domestic pressures that had hemmed me in for years were now materialized in a young, pretty, sad woman. Here you have it, Paula. How old is she? Twenty-six, twenty-seven? Thirty at most? Her gaze is clear, her reproductive potential at its height.
“How old are you?”
“Excuse me?” she asks, somewhere between offended and stunned. She spins a little golden ball that hangs from a thin gold chain around her neck.
“How old are you? You’re obviously much younger than I am,” I blurt out.
“Twenty-nine.” And she stares at me, defiantly.
You hit the nail on the head, Paula. He needed someone with a high ovarian reserve. 226
“He talked about you often. He told me a lot about your work.”
He didn’t talk about me, I think. He talked about my work.
“Oh, really?” I am trying to be nice but having trouble connecting. I’m still at the wedding.
“I brought you some things I found around the house. I think you should have them and besides… it hurts me to look at them. It irritates me to have them around. I’ll give them to you when we leave.”
“What things?” I ask, and I think about the hurt and irritation, about the dimensions of her irritation, how she is a new irritation for me but I’ve been one for her for longer.
“The bag he used to bring over to spend the night.” She aims and throws the paper coffee cup into a bin and starts to speak more dynamically. “I don’t know, some clothes, a toothbrush, a manuscript, oh, yeah, and a bag of dried leaves,” she says, downplaying the treasure she’s been bequeathed.
“A what?” I ask.
“For tea. You know him.” And the present tense makes my heart skip a beat.
We both smile. For a moment, the leaves knit a passing connection. Mauro grew aromatic plants to make infusions. He would put them in transparent bags with labels: lemon balm, mint, thyme, camomile. I can almost hear him. “Help me move this pot, Paula. Thyme likes partial shade and it’s getting too much sun here. Let’s bring it over to that corner.” And me, stopping him, laughing. “Mauro, the neighbours are 227going to report us—this is starting to look like the Amazon jungle… God knows what animals could come out from that thicket!” Amused, he would scratch his nose with the back of his sand-covered hand and say, “Come on, shut up and pull it this way.” I’m flooded with emotion but I keep it under control.
I think about the percentage of life the two of them shared, what was left on his mobile, and I add in everything the phone didn’t save. The resulting figure is proportional to all the pain that landed on me like an unexpected slap. I don’t understand how those dried leaves could irritate her. She must be stupid not to want to hold on to them.
“If you think about it,” she adds distractedly with a slight shrug, “his family doesn’t even know me. I wanted to take things more slowly and he always said that there was no need to wait for Santa Maria del Mar, that we could get married on our own, without telling anyone.”
And I thought about the money they wanted me to inherit, the bedspread, the Bohemian crystal, and I realize that Mauro wouldn’t have had the courage to face up to his mother, to her despotic authority. Mauro had that cowardly side to him, of course he hadn’t brought Carla into his family orbit and told them that I was out. After all, with Carla he was still in the throes of the wide-eyed love of every new relationship. Sweet and powerful. If he had died later, with the bells of Santa Maria del Mar still echoing in his head, she would now be wearing a ring on her finger, and she would be the widow. 228
On the way out we pass the studio with the guests laughing and speaking blithely. Watching them, it seems that the two of us are coming from a distant place where we’ve spent a long time, all the time needed to take other people’s laughter and joy as an insult, all the time needed to understand that there is something sad and vaguely contemptible when love fades, but it’s nothing like the annihilating defeat of death. We believe we’ve got it domesticated with rituals, mourning, symbols, colours, but it remains wild and free. Death is always the one in charge. Death controls life and never the other way around.
Carla hands me Mauro’s bag, which is super heavy because of the manuscript.
“Oof, it’s like a body bag!”
I’m surprised by my flippancy. It frightens me to realize that, somehow, a chapter has ended.
We say goodbye with a sterile peck on each cheek. Even her crisp scent is perfect, yet she was obviously willing to risk it all to be with Mauro. Before I turn and leave, I thank her for meeting up with me. She puts her hands in the pockets of her jeans and lengthens her body, growing a little taller. She bestows on me a bitter smile that I imagine is her way of saying “you’re welcome”. That vein of hostility between us is keeping Mauro alive, and we’ll continue to work together, as rivals, to that end.