“Sir, it’s just that... well, the last time you gave me a raise was... more than a year ago, you know? And now...”
“What do you want? More money?” His eyes are big as saucers now. “Are you out of your mind or what? Do you think they just give me money, like a present? We’re in a recession, do you understand? Yeah, I know you have no fucking idea what I’m talking about, but that’s the way it is. And what do you want money for, Felipa? For the love of God, you have everything you could want here.”
“I want to visit my family for Christmas and—”
“For Christmas? This year? Are you thinking of leaving precisely when there’s the most work, with all the dinner parties and...? C’mon, c’mon, Felipa, don’t mess with me, okay? Leave me alone; just take it up with my wife.”
“But your wife—”
“Felipa.” He looks at her sternly and his dry gesture signals the end of the conversation.
She lowers her head and leaves the office.
For some time now, she has stopped crying when she feels worse than a rat, but this time she shuts herself in her room and weeps until she’s called and has to run out to see what her masters want. Any one of her masters.
Felipa Quijano Quilez is thirty-five years old but looks more like fifty. She’s short, with olive skin, eyes painfully tired, a sad expression on her face, worn-out hands, worn-out hopes.
This day, this afternoon, she calls home from a telephone center.
“I’m coming back,” she declares.
Then she holds back her tears, talks with her mother, with her children. She says the same thing to all of them.
“I was lucky. I won the Spanish lottery.”
At night, she makes dinner.
Cool. Feeling nothing.
She doesn’t sweat now, she feels no fear. She’s worked everything out. Now her will is firm. She cautiously distributes the rat poison she bought at a drugstore downtown, not overdoing it, so they won’t notice its bad taste. The exact amount in the soup, and a little more in the wine and the meat sauce. She found out what she needed to know about it. She had asked the druggist what would happen if people imbibed it by mistake and the man was graphic and generous in his explanations. A person will notice the flavor unless the soup is strong and salted, unless the wine is dark, unless the sauce has mustard. A human being can’t eat it without detecting its bitterness, but a little at a time in soup, wine, sauce... The druggist said that more than one writer of detective novels has asked him about this and he’s become an expert.
But she wants it to kill rats, right?
This is the first night in over a month that the four of them are eating together at home. Generally it’s the husband who’s missing, but the wife also has her dinners with friends, and Miss Vanesa sometimes “studies” at a classmate’s house. This is her chance, after so much patience these final weeks. A royal dinner. She’s a good cook, although they hardly value her work and at times they even get angry or laugh at her. She consults the wife, but she just shrugs and tells her not to make her dizzy with details, to do whatever she wants.
Whatever she wants.
The only negative comment comes from the head of the family.
“This wine seems sour,” he says.
But Miss Vanesa is somewhat kind. “The sauce is very good today, Felipa. It was high time you learned to cook. It’s rather strong...”
She goes back to her room after doing the dishes and clearing the table.
Then she packs her bag.
That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.
So close to freedom.
She doesn’t want to sleep. She believes it’s better to be awake, to keep the tension calmly within her, but she drifts off. She doesn’t know exactly when her eyes close. Well, that’s the proof she’s relaxed. Very relaxed. So relaxed she dreams of happy things, her house, her children. No agitation. Nothing startling. More than surprising, this is all extraordinary. When she wakes up, she finds the first light of day entering her window.
She goes to the master bedroom first.
The wife, Mrs. Laia, is there just like always, lying on her back, with her face mask and one of her silk robes covering her cold body. Her husband, however, must have felt sick because his body is half on the bed, half on the floor, as if he tried to get down or crawl after the life that was escaping from him. His expression is bitter.
Painful.
Felipa looks at him for a while without moving a muscle.
She doesn’t feel a thing.
Nothing.
She goes back to the wife and spits on her. Oh yes.
Then she goes to Miss Vanesa’s room.
And then to Master Pelayo’s.
The girl evidently felt the pain too. She lies on the floor, on her stomach, her hand hooked, a nail chipped. But the boy, just like his mother, seems to be sleeping, seraphic, innocent.
An innocent devil.
Convinced she’s got nothing to fear now, she goes back to the master bedroom and takes some clothes suitable for herself and her mother. She leaves the jewels. She prefers money, the large sum of dirty money hidden in the office. And she doesn’t even grab it all. She doesn’t want to arouse suspicion at the airport. She takes just what she needs to start anew. With the clothes in a bag belonging to the couple, she returns to the children’s rooms and picks through their closets.
The last thing she does before leaving is look out at Turó Parc, the poet Eduard Marquina’s gardens.
This she will miss.
It’s undoubtedly the prettiest park in Barcelona.
She exits the building without anyone seeing her, not even Tomás, the superintendent, who at that time of the day is having his sandwich, away from prying eyes, down in his hideout in the basement. She hails a cab and the driver helps her with her three bags. Destination: the airport.
Felipa Quijano Quilez looks for the last time at the park, at the city to which she’ll only come back if God, in his infinite goodness, wills it. Her face shows no emotion. She doesn’t feel guilty either. In her country, they kill pigs in less pious ways. The only thing she knows, and this certainty increases by the minute, is that she is free.
Free.
For the first time in a long while, there’s a hint of a smile on her face when she sees the airport in the distance.
There’s no problem buying the ticket. There never is if you’re traveling first class. Like a lady. She waits in a comfortable VIP lounge where there’s no lack of anything. And in no time, she’ll be flying back home, to her mother and children.
At long last.
Life isn’t always unfair.
Fucked, yes. Unfair, no. It depends on the person.
She finally laughs when the plane takes off, almost two hours later.
She doesn’t know whether the Philippines has an extradition treaty with Spain, but she doubts very much that they’ll find her in the mountains west of Kabugao, no matter how hard they look.
The Customer Is Always Right
by Imma Monsó
L’Eixample
Translated from Catalan by Valerie Miles
Don’t you ever just let your mind wander?” her husband had asked when they first met. “Wander? Where to?” she said, surprised. He fell in love with her that very instant. He had been married for years to a perennially dissatisfied woman and had come to think it was a trait shared by all females. When he met Onia, it was hard for him to believe he had been wrong. Onia never said things like If only we would do such and such, and even less: If only we had done such and such. He could count on his fingers the times that Onia had begun a sentence with the words if or maybe.