“Try to get some sleep, darling,” Don Agustín said to her. “This business must have made you very nervous.”
“Only for your sake. You must rest now. It’s silly for us to worry. It’s nothing to do with us, after all.”
“Don’t fret over me. You make me feel like a burden. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself for me.”
The softness of his voice didn’t temper the severity of his gaze or his hard-set mouth. Gabriela turned pale, as if he had just threatened to hit her.
“Agustín, why do you say that? I don’t like it when you say things like that. I look after you because I want to, and sometimes it seems you’re determined to remind me of what I’ve long forgotten.”
Iñarra reached for his wife’s hand, which she had retracted so it now hung at her side.
“For God’s sake, Gaby! Why do you always get the wrong idea? I must have put it badly. Your constant goodwill makes me feel as though you’re not entirely sincere.”
Gabriela pulled away from the hand, which had settled for clutching the folds of her apron.
“Doubts make nasty enemies,” she said decisively. “Try to get some sleep, Agustín.”
She walked to the door with her head bent low. From there she turned to add, in a simpler tone:
“I’d feel better if you could just accept things naturally. Goodnight, Agustín.”
As she passed the door to Betty’s room, Gabriela stopped. Betty was walking around the room. She was surely getting undressed for bed. She heard the sound of a body reclining, then a metallic click. Yes, there was no doubt. Betty had just picked up the telephone receiver and was dialling a number.
She held her breath and leant against the door to hear better. The hall stretched out in front of her like a dark stain split by the sliver of light coming from under Betty’s door.
“Hello,” she said, “are you alone?”
A silence.
“Don’t say anything. It’s better that way.”
Another silence.
“Yes, yes, see you tomorrow.”
Gaby heard the click of the receiver being replaced on the stand, then she moved away silently. Once she was in her bedroom and had got into bed, she took a packet of cigarettes from the drawer in her bedside table. Long hours unfurled ahead of her like an image multiplied in a house of mirrors. She smoked with relish, tricking her wakeful anxiety with the calm appearance of her gestures, her gaze lost in the whitish smoke that slowly dissipated in the darkness of the room.
Boris Czerbó said goodbye to Blasi at the door to his apartment. The innocuous questions had sapped his spirits and left in his mouth the bitter taste of the past being churned up. Behind him Rita waited, ingenuous and terrified, her expression of total submission inciting him to cruelty and spite.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said in their native language. “Go and check everything’s ready for me. I’ll need two tablets to sleep tonight.”
Rita had picked up an ashtray to empty but her hands were trembling so much that she dropped it. Cigarette butts rolled onto the carpet and Rita stared in fright at where the ash now blurred a patch of the Persian design.
“Clumsy cow,” Boris muttered. “You’re a waste of space. Always have been.”
Rita burst into tears. Boris pursed his lips in annoyance.
“Clean that up before you go to bed. Goodnight.”
But Rita’s presence followed him to his bedroom, which was full of her preparations: two glasses, one containing water and one with some black prunes floating inside. The brownish liquid testified to the fact that they had been put there some time ago. Next to the glasses he saw the tube of sleeping tablets and a packet of cigarettes. Everything was in order.
He heard Rita’s footsteps in the living room. Lulled by the familiar sound, a pleasant drowsiness gradually crept over Boris. Very soon “that thing” started to rear its head. A series of scenes paraded before his bleary eyes. The cage doors opened to make way for dark memories of a certain time. Rita loomed up, with her resigned and soulless presence.
“She will never know peace, ever,” Boris said to himself.
The cabalistic phrase soon dissolved the fearsome images. Sleep closed the doors of consciousness. Boris felt the knot in his chest loosening and, giving way to the sensation of wellbeing, he let himself be carried off by a stupor that rocked him like waves on a beach.
2
The Moon in the Window
That afternoon, at siesta time, the plaza of Villa Devoto looked like a peaceful village square. Local women were knitting and chatting under the huge eucalyptus trees. Every now and then a child ran up to one of them before trotting off, proudly jangling the coveted prize in his or her hand: a few coins for the chocolate seller or the merry-go-round.
Three people were sitting on one of the benches. A man was reading the crime pages of the morning paper with his hat pulled down over his eyes. The two women next to him eyed him askance, apparently absorbed in counting the stitches of their knitting. The man soon began to nod off over the journalistic suppositions, and when the newspaper fell to his feet he made no move to recover it. The women raised their eyes. His head dropped onto his chest, with the indiscretion common to those who sleep in public places.
One of the women then pointed the toe of her shoe towards a headline in the crime pages.
“Poor Frida,” she sighed.
Her companion glanced about before bending to pick up the newspaper. The children were playing at least twenty paces from the bench. She folded the paper and placed it next to the sleeping man, allowing herself time to skim through the report she already knew by heart.
“I don’t feel sorry for her,” she said. “She was a stranger. I never liked her.”
“No, don’t say that.” The other woman seemed less susceptible to prejudice and thus more open to compassion. “Eidinger wasn’t a stranger. His family has lived around here since he was the age our kids are now.”
“What does that have to do with it?
They spoke in hushed tones, with the lukewarm conviction of aspirational gossips.
“He married so mysteriously. No one knows who she was.”
“A girl from a nice family.”
“A girl from a rich family. I suppose that must’ve been a factor in their love at first sight. Heiresses always believe they’re making conquests. My husband reminded me of that this morning. He never trusted Frida Eidinger.”
Male opinion muscled into the conversation.
“But do you know anything?”
“No, no, nothing. No one has really been able to say anything about Frida Eidinger. Tell me the truth, would you have made friends with her all the same?”
“Frida wasn’t looking for our friendship.” The sincere remark sounded like a posthumous homage.
“She might not have been. Eidinger, on the other hand, often came to the pharmacy to talk to my husband. I think he was trying to get an invitation for himself and his wife to our house. My husband pretended not to cotton on, of course, but he had no choice but to accept an invitation to theirs one Saturday afternoon.”
“Oh, really? You never told me that.”
The fierce irony in that comment was the verbal equivalent of a dressmaker’s pincushion.
“Of course I regretted having accepted the invitation,” said the woman, continuing her story. “They’d asked us to go early so we’d have time to play a game of canasta after tea. Gustavo came out to meet us.”
“People say their house was very nicely done out.”
“Oh, yes. He spent his last pesos on it before she came over from Europe. Well, as I was saying, Frida didn’t appear and Gustavo hurriedly said she’d be a little late because she’d been busy in the kitchen until the last minute getting the tea ready.”