“It’s for you, the drawing.”
A woman and a dog, simple and violent, done in green, like a stain on the paper. And that’s when it occurs to him that he loves her.
Or it’s later, perhaps, when he looks at the clock and thinks he’s going to miss the bus and says, “I have to go, Marita.”
And she replies, “No.”
Or in the last half hour, when Marita accompanies him to the bus station, still dressed as a Roman soldier because she refused to take off her costume.
“I’ll go back for my clothes tomorrow; I want them to see me dressed like this at home.”
And they walk through the pine grove between the town hall and the bus station, her leaning into him, in silence.
Or at the last second, when he doesn’t know what to do with her face, so huge, so full of life, round as a pie, so close to his as they stand there by the bus, which is already full of people staring at them through the glass, and Marita says, “I’d be so happy if you were my boyfriend.”
That and the terrible urge, each time the memory surfaces, to turn back time, to become two, three, fifteen years younger, to go back to that bus station where a naïve teenage boy is hugging a girl dressed up as a Roman soldier. He waves a hand and it’s as if the physical sensation itself dissolves, as if it were made of multiple tiny particles, some more alive than others, a rain both driving and still, a cascade of unconnected sensations in which one desire burns like a red-hot ember, reaching out to him, shaking him, shouting in his ear—Kiss her, you idiot, kiss her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrés Barba Muñiz (Madrid, 1975) is a Spanish novelist, essayist, translator, scriptwriter and photographer. He is the author of a total of twelve books of literary fiction, non-fiction, photography, arts and children’s literature. Among other prizes he has been awarded the Premio Torrente Ballester de Narrativa (for Versiones de Teresa), the Premio Anagrama de Ensayo (for La ceremonia del porno) and the Premio Juan March de Narrativa (for Muerte de un caballo). He was also shortlisted in the XIX Premio Herralde de Novela (for La hermana de Katia, made into a film a few years after by Mijke de Jong). In 2010 he was featured in Granta’s magazine as one of the twenty-two best young Spanishlanguage writers. His works have been translated into ten languages.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Lisa Dillman translates from the Spanish and Catalan and teaches at Emory University in Atlanta. In addition to Rain Over Madrid, by Andrés Barba, some of her recent translations include The Mule, by Juan Eslava Galán, Me,Who Dove Into the Heart of the World, by Sabina Berman, Christopher Domínguez Michael’s Critical Dictionary of Mexican Literature and Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World.