Translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush
Teresa Solana (1962–) was born in Barcelona in 1962, where she currently lives. A philosopher by training, she tried her hand at various lines of employment before embracing literary translation. She directed the National Translation Centre in Spain for seven years and now devotes her time to writing her own novels and translating them into Spanish. A Not So Perfect Crime, her first novel, won the 2007 Brigada 21 Prize for best noir in Catalan and A Shortcut to Paradise, her second, was short-listed for the 2008 Salambó Prize for best novel in Catalan. She is translated into several languages. Solana herself is often a character in her fiction – in one novel the character of Solana, a writer, hires private detectives to do some research for her next novel; the real-life Solana then wrote her next novel based on the fictional research uncovered by her fictional detectives in the last novel.
The mossos came this morning. I’d been expecting them for days.
When I opened the door, they were still panting. That’s nothing unusual. Visitors all get to my attic flat on the seventh on their last legs: there’s no lift. The stairs have high steps and they’re an effort to climb, and instead of taking it calmly, like Carmeta and me, they must have pelted up like lunatics. I reckon their uniforms will have set the neighbours’ tongues wagging as there are a number of pensioners with nothing better to do than look through their spy-holes at my staircase. I only hope the mossos don’t decide to question them, because my neighbours love to stir things. In any case, I don’t think they suspect any funny business.
There was a man and a woman, nice and polite they were, and she was much younger. My hair was in a tangle, I wasn’t made up and was wearing the horrible sky-blue polyester bathrobe and granny slippers I’d taken the precaution of buying a few days ago at one of the stalls in the Ninot market. The bathrobe is very similar to the one worn by Conxita the eighty-year old on the second floor, but it looked too new so I put it through the washing-machine several times the day before yesterday so it was more like an old rag, which is how I wanted it to look. Now the bathrobe was frayed and flecked with little bobbles of fluff, and, to round off the effect, I spilt a cup of coffee I was drinking on my bust. The woman tactfully scrutinized me from head to toe, dwelling on the stains and dishevelled hair, and I was really lucky one of the police belonged to the female sex since we ladies take much more notice of the small details than the men folk do. She seemed very on the ball and I trust she drew her own conclusions from my shabby appearance.
Her colleague, fortyish and with Paul Newman’s eyes, was the one in charge. He introduced himself very nicely, asked me if I was who I am and said he just had a few questions he wanted to ask. A routine enquiry, he added smiling soothingly. I’d nothing to worry about. I adopted the astonished expression I’d been rehearsing for days in front of the mirror and invited them into the dining room.
As they followed me down the passage, I made sure I gave them the impression I was a frail, sickly old dear struggling to walk and draw breath. I exaggerated, because I’m pretty sprightly for my age and, thank God, I’m not in bad health, although I tried to imitate the way Carmeta walks, dragging my feet at the speed of a turtle, as if every bone in my body was aching. Both homed in on the sacks of cement, the tins of paint and workmen’s tools that are still in the passage, and asked me if I was having building work done. I told them the truth: that after all that rain, the kitchen ceiling collapsed and it had been a real mess.
“If only you’d seen it…! You’d have thought a bomb had dropped!” I told them with a sigh. “And it was so lucky I was watching the telly in the dining room…!”
The young policewoman nodded sympathetically and said that’s the drawback with top flats, though an attic has lots of advantages because you get terraces and plenty of light. “What’s more,” she added shyly, “with all the traffic there is in the Eixample, you don’t hear the noise from the cars or breathe in so many fumes.” I agreed and told her a bit about what the Eixample was like almost fifty years ago when Andreu and I came to live here.
Visibly on edge, her colleague immediately interjected and asked me if I’d had any news of my son-in-law. I adopted my slightly senile expression again and said I hadn’t.
The policeman persisted. He wanted to know the last time I saw Marçal and if I’d spoken to him by phone. I told him as ingenuously as I could that I’d not heard from him for some time and politely enquired why he was asking.
“He disappeared a week ago and his family think something untoward may have happened. That’s why we’re talking to everyone who knows him,” he replied softly. “I suppose you don’t know where he’s got to, do you?”
“Who?” I said pretending to be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
“Your son-in-law.”
“Marçal?”
“Yes, Marçal.”
“Sorry… What was it you just asked me?”
Like old people who really don’t cotton on, I changed the subject and asked them if they’d like a drink, a coffee, an infusion, or something stronger. When they asked me if I knew he and my little girl were negotiating a divorce and if I was aware my son-in-law had a restraining order in force because she’d reported him for physical abuse, I simply looked at the floor and shrugged my shoulders. Reluctantly, I confessed I suspected things weren’t going too well.
“But all married couples have problems… I didn’t want to harp on about theirs.” And added, shaking my head, “Nowadays women don’t have the patience… In my time…”
I didn’t finish my sentence. There was no need. The young policewoman looked at me affectionately and gave one of those condescending smiles liberated young females of today reserve for us old grey-heads with antiquated ideas. Out of the corner of one eye, I registered she’d had a French manicure and wore a wedding ring. To judge by her pink cheeks and smiley expression that young woman must still be in her honeymoon phase.
Before they could start grilling me about Marçal and his relationship with Marta again, I quickly began to gabble on about stuff that was totally unrelated. An old dear who lives by herself, has nobody to talk to and spends her day sitting on her sofa in front of the telly watching programs she doesn’t understand. My grouses made them uneasy and the man finally glanced at his watch and said they must be leaving. Their visit (because you couldn’t really call it an interrogation) had lasted under ten minutes. When they were saying goodbye, they repeated I shouldn’t worry. That it was probably just a misunderstanding.
*
Marta, my little daughter, will soon be thirty-six. I’m seventy-four, and it’s no secret Andreu and I were getting on when I got pregnant with Marta. Now it’s quite normal to have your first baby at forty but it wasn’t in my day. If you didn’t have a bun in the oven before you were thirty, people scowled at you, as if it was a sin not to have children. The kindest comment they’d make was that you weren’t up to it. If you were married and childless, you suddenly became defective.
Marta is an only child. As she was such a latecomer, the poor dear didn’t have a brother or sister. Apart from Carmeta and Ramon, who are kind of pretend aunt and uncle, my little girl doesn’t have any real ones or cousins. From the day we buried her father, may he rest in peace, Marta’s only had Carmeta and me, as you can hardly count Ramon, Carmeta’s husband, after he had his stroke. Carmeta has to feed him with some sort of puree she buys at the chemists that she administers with a syringe through a rubber tube that goes in through his nose and down to his stomach, a torture that’s simply prolonging his agony because his doctors say he’ll never recover. They insisted to Carmeta that Ramon isn’t suffering, though we spend the whole blessed day with him and are not so sure about that.
Carmeta’s the same age as me, and, though I can’t complain about my health, she’s rather the worse for wear. A cancer she can’t see the back of. She and Ramon didn’t have children, and both doted on Marta like an aunt and uncle from the day she was born. My daughter loves them and they love her. If it hadn’t been for his stroke, I’d cross my heart and swear Ramon would have given my son-in-law a face lift and things would have turned out differently.
A pity none of us was in the know a year ago.
We were completely in the dark.
Even though we sometimes said our little girl seemed to be behaving a bit strangely. Sluggishly. As if she were unhappy. But we all have our off moments, don’t we?
*
Our little girl put on a brave front. Partly because she didn’t want us to worry, and partly because she was embarrassed to acknowledge her husband beat her. If I’d never decided to buy some pastries and pay her a visit one day, after accompanying Carmeta to her chemo session, I expect we’d still be none the wiser and it would be life as usual. That morning, when Marta opened the door barricaded behind a pair of huge sunglasses, our alarm bells immediately started ringing. Something was amiss. She pretended she had conjunctivitis and that’s why she was wearing dark glasses at home, but Carmeta, who’s a suspicious sort, didn’t swallow that and snatched them from her face. Our hearts missed several beats when we saw that black eye lurking under layers of makeup.
At first she denied it. Carmeta and I are no fools and applied the third degree and she finally caved in. In floods of tears she confessed her husband drank too much and beat her now and then. A punch, a slap, a shove… He’d put it down to stress at work, when he calmed down. He’d also say he would kill her, if she ever told anyone.
I saw a bruise on my little girl’s left arm and told her to strip off. The poor thing couldn’t bring herself to say no and agreed, reluctantly. Then Carmeta and I burst into tears. Our darling Marta was black and blue all over her body. From that day on we never referred to him by his name again. My son-in-law became the Animal, the Son of a Bitch, or the Bastard. We got weaving. We persuaded Marta to report him and the three of us went to see a lawyer. Marta was afraid nobody would believe her and that the judge would take her child away, but the lawyer did a good job reassuring her and, in the end, made a start on the paperwork. And it was true, with his executive suits and silk ties, the Bastard seemed like a normal person.
A cunt of a normal person who beat his wife and threatened to kill her.
And our little girl, quite naturally, was scared.
But now she had us on her side.
*
The Bastard went to live with his sister and disappeared from our lives for months on end. Marta, who’d been reduced to skin and bones by all the unpleasantness, even began to put on weight. Until one evening he appeared out of the blue at her place and said he was going to kill her.
It was only a matter of time.
Depending on his patience.
And Carmeta suddenly saw the light.
No well-intentioned law could protect Marta. If he put his mind to it, the Bastard would sooner or later do the evil deed. As he said, it was only a matter of time. A matter of waiting until one of us lowered her guard or the judge decided there were more serious cases to see to and that our little girl no longer needed protection. That she could manage on her own.
It’s not hard to intimidate someone. Or kill them.
And, in the meantime, the Bastard would sour her life.
Her and everybody else’s.
*
It’s a piece of luck I have an attic flat and that’s it got a terrace. The woman mosso was right. Attics can be very inconvenient but they have lots of advantages. And if you don’t agree, just ask the Bastard.
Andreu and I rented this flat on the Eixample just before we got married, and the only item my husband insisted on when we were courting and looking for a flat was that the flat should have a small terrace. My parents didn’t have a terrace because we lived on the third floor, but when the weather was good we’d go up to the flat roof and enjoy the cool of evening and gossip with the neighbours. I’d go there with my friends in the summer. We put our swimsuits on, lay our beach towels on the red tiles and imitated the film stars in our magazines and listened to the radio and drank fizzy lemonade or tepid Coca Cola pretending it was Martini. Then we’d have to fight off sunstroke with aspirins, water packs and vinegar, but it was worth it. When you’re young, there’s a solution to everything.
It’s not that my little terrace is any great shakes. All the same, twenty-two square meters are enough for a pine, lemon, and orange tree, a magnolia, a decent size jasmine and a bougainvillea, not to mention the dozens of pots of roses, petunias, daisies and chrysanthemums I’ve put in every cranny. When Andreu and I set foot there for the first time, I could hardly imagine how this little terrace would turn out to be so providential.
Because, I don’t know how I could have helped my little girl without the terrace.
And I reckon that’s what a mother’s for: to be around to give a helping hand to her children when they’ve got problems. Whether they like it or not.
It was Carmeta who came up with the solution. She’s always been very imaginative. The terrace and the kitchen the downpour ruined gave her the idea, and it was no sooner said than done. Neither of us was prepared to wait with arms folded while the little girl was left at the mercy of an obsolete legal system and a lunatic who wanted to bump her off. We had to do something and do it quick, before we rued the day. As Carmeta said, a stitch in time saves nine.
I called the Bastard on his mobile a couple of weeks ago from a phone-box and told him we should have a chat. I persuaded him by saying I had to tell him about a new development that was going to make Marta slow up on the divorce, and, as I knew he was short of cash because he drank over the odds and had got the sack, I added I wanted to give him a present of a weekend away with Marta. Three or four days in a good hotel with a swimming pool, all expenses paid, would help them make the peace, I told him. My call and sudden interest in saving their marriage took him by surprise, but, as Carmeta had anticipated, the financial bait hooked him.
Early the next morning, Carmeta came to my flat carrying a sports-bag. Her face looked rough and she confessed she’d had a bad night. I told her I could ring the Bastard and give him an excuse if she’d rather leave it for another day, but she’d hear none of it nothing. The tranquillizers she’d taken were beginning to impact and she already felt slightly better, or so she said.
“What do you reckon? Should we have a little drop of something to put us in the mood?” I suggested hesitantly.
“No alcohol!” replied Carmeta most professionally. “What we need are anti-stress pills. We’re far too nervy.”
Carmeta took the anti-depressants out of her bag the doctor had prescribed after telling her she had cancer and offered me one. As Carmeta is the expert when it comes to pills, I meekly swallowed it and said nothing. Out of the corner of an eye I noted that she took two. I went to the kitchen and made two cups of tea while Carmeta changed her clothes in the bedroom. Carmeta had brought an old tracksuit top and slippers. I was also wearing old clothes that would have to be thrown away.
The Bastard arrived at around eleven. Grudgingly, I pecked him on both cheeks and led him into the dining room. With a studiedly senile smile, I offered him a cognac that the idiot accepted in a flash while he sprawled on the sofa. I took my opportunity to go into the kitchen.
“Marçal!” I shouted, trying to ensure my voice didn’t sound rude. “Could you help me get the bottle of cognac from the top shelf. I can’t reach it…”
I’d left the knife under a tea cloth on the kitchen top, and Carmeta was skulking behind the door, holding her breath. As soon as I heard his footsteps, I shut the window and switched on the radio.
The second Marçal stepped into the kitchen, Carmeta stuck the carving knife into the small of his back. The attack took him by surprise and he started howling. Before he had time to react I grabbed the knife from under the tea cloth and stuck it in violently. Blood spurted from his neck and through the air like a liquid streamer splashing everywhere.
Still screaming, the Animal lifted his hands to his neck in an attempt to stop the haemorrhaging, but from the way the blood was bubbling out, I knew he had no chance. I’d stuck it right in his carotid artery, and that thrust, driven by a mother’s fury, was a death sentence.
He collapsed in under a minute. Carmeta and I left him agonizing on the kitchen floor and went into the bathroom. We washed our hands and faces, changed our blood-soaked tops and went into the dining room. We wanted the Bastard to die alone, like a dog. And he did. A Beatles song on the radio drowned out his cries.
By the time we went back to the kitchen, my son-in-law was dead. The floor had turned into a red puddle, was awash with blood. The son of a bitch had left one hell of a mess. We pulled on washing up gloves, grabbed the bucket and cloth and started cleaning up. The two of us were at it for a good hour but even so it still wasn’t spotless. After checking his body had stopped bleeding, we stripped him and put his clothes in the washer on a cold-water program, added a squirt of one of those stain removers advertised on the telly. We wiped him a bit with the cloth. Then I took some rolls of bandage from a drawer and Carmeta and I bound him like a mummy. As we were intending to cut him into small chunks, we thought it would be less stressful if he were bandaged. I started on his head and Carmeta on his feet.
It took us ages because the Bastard weighed more than ninety kilos and wasn’t easy to lift. When we’d finished bandaging, we left him and went back to the dining room. The effort had left us exhausted. We saw it was lunchtime and though neither Carmeta nor I were hungry, we behaved ourselves, ate a banana and drank a glass of sugared water to re-energize ourselves. We also took another anti-depressant each. Carmeta, who was worn out, dozed off straightaway, and I decided to let her sleep and take a nap myself. When she woke up, she swallowed another batch of tranquillizers and we both returned to our task. Our day wasn’t over yet.
Carmeta went to fetch the electric saw and brought it into the kitchen. Luckily one of her neighbours is still into do-it-yourself and the store-room in her building isn’t locked. We pulled our rubber gloves back on and plugged in the saw that worked perfectly. We sawed his head off first and placed it whole inside a rubbish bag, and, then, his arms and legs, all in small chunks. We distributed the pieces in different sacks and left his torso till last. As that’s where the entrails are, Carmeta and I thought it would be best to empty them out before starting to reduce the eventual mess.
I took my courage into my own hands and very carefully made an incision from the top to the bottom of his mutilated corpse trying to tear only the skin. I must have burst his gut, because all of a sudden, a horrific stink filled the kitchen and I had to open the window and squirt air-freshener around. Each of us pulled on one side of his torso and succeeded in separating his ribs and wrenching out his heart and lungs. His heart slipped out of Carmeta’s grasp and the moment it sloshed on the ground I started to retch and vomit. As I’d practically been fasting I only brought up yellow bile, but I felt queasy and my stomach was churning.
Carmeta rushed me into the dining room and forced me to stretch out on the floor with my legs in the air. When she saw that I was showing signs of life, she went back to the kitchen.
“Don’t move. I’ll gut the Son of a Bitch,” she said.
There was still some sun on the terrace. The pale rays of spring barely gave out any heat but were a pleasant reminder of other happier evenings when with Andreu, may he rest in peace, Carmeta and Ramon we’d rustle up a bread, tomato and mountain ham snack on the terrace and stay there late into the night chatting about this and that, never imagining that one day this small terrace of mine, with its views of Montjuïc and its flowerpots, would be an improvised cemetery. Necessity is the mother of invention, or so they say.
We buried the head next to the lemon-tree, the one with the biggest pot, and stuffed his hands and feet into the ceramic pot with the pine tree. We stuck his entrails in with the magnolia, his heart with the bougainvillea and his liver with the orange tree, and divided the rest up among the remaining pots, taking care not to damage the flowers. We’d scarcely finished when we realized there were still seven or eight pieces of meat in a bag and we had no receptacles left, but at that time of night after toiling the whole day, we were fit to drop, so I suggested to Carmeta that we should wrap them in foil and put them in the freezer.
“We’ll think of something tomorrow after we’ve had a rest.”
Carmeta looked in a bad way again. Although she wasn’t complaining, her grimaces showed the pain she was in. I helped her shower and wash her hair, and switched on a wash-load of tops, towels and cloths we’d used to clean up the kitchen. The foam in the washing machine turned pink.
Ignoring her protests, I accompanied her home, and on the way, threw the Bastard’s clothes in a rubbish container. Carmeta could hardly stand straight, so I made her a glass of hot milk and forced her to eat biscuits before going to bed. I waited until she fell asleep and, while Carmeta snored, I changed Ramon’s nappies and gave him his supper. Just before I left, as I was giving him a kiss on the forehead, I thought how sooner or later we’d have to do something to help him too. Good people don’t deserve to end like that.
The minute I opened the door to my flat, I realized that, if I continued on an empty stomach, without any food input, my blood pressure would take a dive and I’d faint. In the morning, before the Bastard arrived, I’d taken the precaution of leaving some sandwiches in the dining room so as not to have to go back into the kitchen. As my stomach was slightly queasy, I had a couple of spoons of anti-gut-ache syrup and ate a ham sandwich and apple while watching the news. The sandwich and apple went down well, and I was soon asleep on the sofa in front of the telly that was still on. That night, unlike others, I didn’t have a nightmare.
The next morning I got up early and spent it giving the rest of the flat a thorough clean. Although they say bleach doesn’t remove traces of blood, I’d bet anything you like that if the police decided to investigate they wouldn’t find a scrap of evidence. I took a mid-morning break and first phoned Marta, who was at work, and then Carmeta, who’d got up and was feeling better. I continued cleaning. When I finished, it was past four and my back was aching.
I took the tops, cleaning cloths and towels out of the drier, put everything in plastic sacks and went out. I threw the sacks into four different containers on my way to Ramon and Carmeta’s. Carmeta was in much better spirits and was waiting for me with a bottle of cava in the fridge which we drank while we kept Ramon company.
The building-workers came the following day and gutted the kitchen with their hammers. They also chipped out the wall and floor tiles. They worked a good two weeks in my kitchen, and now I have a new ceiling, designer tiles and a built-in kitchen. The tiles and cupboards are nothing out of the ordinary because they were bought in a sale, but altogether it looks really good.
*
I know I must keep my lips sealed and can’t tell my little girl not to worry, that the Bastard won’t ever lay his hand on her again. Marta knows nothing. Nothing at all. She’s still very young and God knows how she’d react if she knew what Carmeta and I had done. Besides, what with her kid and her work, Marta has enough headaches, and it would be the last straw if she had to cope with moral dilemmas or stupid remorse. So mum’s definitely the word! As Carmeta says, if what we did is wrong, we’ll settle our account in the world beyond, with whoever.
Some girls from our yoga group are coming to supper tomorrow. We’ll take advantage of the good weather and dine on the terrace. Just in case, I’ve bought a good supply of incense sticks, I mean, just in case the Bastard starts to get smelly and sour our supper. As Carmeta has got to start another round of chemo and is leaving the class, it will be a kind of farewell party. I’ve also scrubbed myself from the class, because I’m going to live in her place for a while from tomorrow. When she starts being sick and feeling like a wet rag, Carmeta will need someone to accompany her to hospital and lend her a helping hand with Ramon.
We both know she’s not got much time left. She knows and I know, so no need to mention it. Nonetheless, tomorrow’s farewell will be a whale of party: we’ll eat and drink until our livers give up on us. Our style has never been to turn tragic, and even less so when we’ve both got one foot on the other side. What’s coming our way is coming.
I live very near the Ninot market where I shop every day. I like to look around the stalls and gossip with the saleswomen and locals from the neighbourhood. As I buy there daily and never use the freezer, I’d completely forgotten the packets that were still there. That morning, the visit by the police made me remember I must do something with all that and I rang Carmeta. I told her I was thinking of going to the florists and buying some earth and a couple of big pots.
“Forget about the pots…!” Carmeta retorted. “Go to the Ninot and see if you can buy some spongy mushrooms and fairy rings. And buy garlic and onions as well.” “Tomorrow,” she added in an authoritarian tone, “we shall eat roast pork and spring mushrooms!”
Initially I objected, mostly on behalf of the other girls. But, by the cold light of day, I have to agree it’s not a bad solution.