“Those are the things...” she began to say, but she looked away, nodded, and then looked at me again. “Well, the things you could find out. Do you still want to be with me?”
How the hell should I know?
We didn’t finish the dinner. At least I didn’t feel up to it. I paid the bill and we left the restaurant together. It had turned cooler outside. The nights are cold in October. When I felt in my pocket, next to my fingers, the warm bulge of the little box with the ring, I withdrew my hand quickly, as if something had bitten it.
We took a long stroll together to the bay. The tide was high and the waves broke near the pier. The prostitutes had begun their procession through the Jardines de Pereda, but they didn’t say anything. If you don’t look at them, they don’t look at you.
When we reached the Palacete, I turned to gaze at her. Irene was startled, as if she feared I was going to tell her something unpleasant. The sea behind her was an oil slick. Beyond that the lights of Somo and Pedreña twinkled, like gems in a black velvet display stand.
“What did you do next?” I asked finally.
“Next?”
“Yes, next. You went back home? Called the police? What did you do?”
Irene nodded and took a deep breath.
“I went back home.”
She went back home, but it wasn’t easy. She had spent the evening wandering through the town, feeling that the whole world was watching her. She didn’t dare go back, because she didn’t know if Paco had eaten the soup and the chicken and drunk the wine that she had left for him, or if, on the contrary, after noticing the meal tasted strange, he had preferred to cook something himself. He was such a good cook!
However, at about nine in the evening she decided to return. She went up the stairs to put the moment off. They lived on the fourth floor; according to her own words, every step was a little Everest. When she got to her door, her hands were shaking so much that she dropped the key ring on the floor twice before she was able to put the key in the lock properly and open it.
“Holy smoke!” exclaimed Irene after a pause. She was scared to death!
She closed the door after her and crossed the hall. She moved forward, all ears. Paco used to eat with the telly on. From the corridor she could hear the newsreader handing over to the weather-girl. She stopped for a few minutes next to the kitchen door, rooted to the wall, listening for the sound of crockery, the noise of plates in the kitchen sink or Paco’s groans as he lay dying on the linoleum. After a few minutes in which only the weather forecast broke the silence in the house, she went in.
“He was dead, and the kitchen... my God, the kitchen was a mess: plates scattered here and there, a chair overturned, pieces of chicken and noodles all over the place. Paco was in one corner. Fortunately he’d landed facedown, because if I’d seen his features, I... I don’t know...”
A bitter breeze like the sharp edge of a sheet of paper drifted through the bay and Irene shivered. I hesitated for a moment, but finally put my arm around her shoulder. That gesture I had repeated so many times over the last few months gave me the creeps on that occasion. Irene snuggled up to me and put her little head on my shoulder, with that combination of fear and admiration that I had fallen in love with. I turned my face towards her and looked at her, so small, so delicate. Who would have imagined she was a murderer? How can you know what’s hidden behind any given face, what’s rotting slowly under the gentle reflection of a calm bay?
Shit, who can know the first thing about another person? What other way is there of getting to know her, apart from asking questions until the whole truth comes out?
After all that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I had to know everything. Beyond a certain point you have to know the details, you have to lift the blanket and look at the corpse, lower the window to pass next to the crashed car that has kept you waiting two hours on the motorway. Beyond a certain point it’s no longer possible to change the channel during a Don’t Drink and Drive advert.
Anyhow, we turned round. We had already reached Cuesta del Gas. Up ahead, Avenida de la Reina Victoria is long and, during the night, lonely. The case of the female teacher murdered there a couple of years before came to mind, so I insisted we go back.
“What did you do when the police arrived?”
But Irene shook her head.
“You didn’t call the police?”
Irene shook her head again.
“Christ!”
“I was frightened.”
“Frightened of what, for God’s sake! He was already dead!”
Irene shrugged.
“I didn’t want them telling me off again. The police, just like Paco, just like you now...” said Irene. Her bottom lip was trembling. I didn’t know whether to make a run for it or console her or... well, I didn’t know what the hell to do.
“But then, what did you do?”
“Cleaning. I cleaned everything. I mopped and wiped up. I cleared the table and the hob. And when everything was as clean as a new pin, I sat down in the living room and switched on the telly. They were showing that series — I don’t remember what it was called — that Emilio Aragón was in. I loved it. I always watched it although Paco thought it was garbage.”
I got the impression that this was said with a degree of pride in her voice.
We sat on one of those benches in Castelar that look directly onto the boats rocking in Puerto Chico. The halyards echoed as they rattled on the masts of the sailing boats. I, admittedly, was in a state approaching shock and at that point had decided to accept whatever she said to me. That’s why, instead of jumping off the bench and beginning to cry out like a madman because the woman I loved had killed her husband and then sat down to watch Médico de familia, a soap opera about a family doctor, I merely asked her if she remembered anything about that day’s episode, but she shook her head, pinching her bottom lip with her thumb and the index finger of her right hand.
“No, to be honest, I don’t remember what episode it was, but I don’t think Emilio Aragón was still with Lydia Bosch, because I’d already seen the installment with the wedding in Soto del Real. I switched on the telly but no, I didn’t pay much attention, really. In fact, I was thinking about what to do next.
“Well, in this neighborhood there were many cats, so...”
It was an old neighborhood next to an overgrown park. The cats kept the rats under control, that’s why the neighbours were delighted with the cats and put out the previous day’s leftovers by the doorway for them, in little plastic plates or crumpled-up tinfoil. It was common at five o’clock in the evening to see half a dozen alley cats prowling around the area, waiting for their ration of leftovers. On Boxing Day they had a special menu.
Irene thought it would be a good idea for the cats to eat her husband’s remains. Sitting on the sofa in the living room, pinching her bottom lip with her thumb and index finger while she watched the grandfather scold Chechu for lying about the exam results, she decided that the best course of action would be to chop her husband’s body into pieces small enough to boil in the pressure cooker, so that the flesh came away from the bone. When she was a little girl she had taken part in the pig slaughter in Quintanilla del Colmenar, so she had some idea about how to chop up meat.
“The problem was, I didn’t dare turn him around and look at his face,” said Irene with a vacant gaze. “I loved Paco. I didn’t understand how I had been able to do that. What could I have been thinking? How was I going to manage to chop him up while he was looking at me? I was desperate!”