How different from his son-in-law, almost his other son, so serious and aloof, walking into the garden that morning with his firm bearing, his solid way of being in the world, his dark double-breasted suit, his shoes — made to measure in the best English shoe store in Madrid — stepping on the gravel, holding the briefcase that the girl took from him so she could carry it, heavy with documents and blueprints that required his attention even on a day off, for he had a position with a great deal of responsibility in the construction of University City, as Don Francisco de Asís took pleasure in telling his friends. In fact, El Sol had published Ignacio Abel’s photograph a few days earlier, and Don Francisco de Asís — breaking with custom because he defined himself as an unyielding reader of the ABC—had bought that paper and read aloud to Doña Cecilia the article on their son-in-law’s talk at the Student Residence, and then cut out the page and kept it in a folder in the imitation Renaissance desk in his study. Not very shrewd, in no way inclined to think ill of anyone, because of elderly innocence or lack of imagination or excessive reverence for the formalities, Don Francisco de Asís, as he himself said, would have put his hand in fire for his son-in-law, who didn’t smoke, barely drank more than a glass of wine at meals, never raised his voice, not even when discussing politics, which rarely happened, not even at meals when his brother-in-law Víctor or the uncle the priest would hotly argue the calamity of the Republic, the constant anarchy, the insolence of the workers, the need in Spain for a providential figure like the Duce or the Führer, or at least the sadly missed General Primo de Rivera, a strong man. On such occasions his son-in-law didn’t respond, never used an uncouth word; he was a Socialist but thanks to his work had been able to buy a car and a spacious apartment with an elevator in the most elegant section of Calle Príncipe de Vergara, between Goya and Lista no less; he sent the children to the Institute School so they’d have a secular education, and didn’t permit scapulars to be hung around their necks, but he hadn’t opposed their taking Communion or their mother teaching them prayers; he didn’t waste his evenings sitting idly in cafés; the time he didn’t devote to his work he spent with his wife and two children, Don Francisco de Asís’s only two grandchildren, who sadly wouldn’t carry to the next generation the family name of Ponce-Cañizares. Last night he probably worked late at University City and early this morning drove to the house in the Sierra. Immune to his habitual coldness, Don Francisco de Asís offered a festive celebration when he saw his son-in-law, and gave him a wet kiss of welcome on each cheek. The two children struggled to be closer to him, to carry his briefcase and recount the adventures and explorations of the past few days, and they competed to mention the books they had read. They reminded him to take them and their mother that afternoon to the irrigation pond; they asked him if what he’d promised before his arrival was true, that he wouldn’t leave tomorrow, Sunday afternoon, but would drive them back to Madrid on Monday morning. When he saw his wife, he looked her in the eye and kissed her on the lips, and his son saw from behind how he put his hand on her waist and pressed her lightly to him.
The benevolent attitude that Adela’s extreme sensitivity to him detected with relief and almost with gratitude was in fact the consequence of his deception. Perhaps her husband wouldn’t have placed his hand on her waist when he kissed her if he hadn’t embraced another woman the previous afternoon; his gestures of tenderness compensated for the offense she didn’t know she’d received; they were the remnants of an effusiveness another woman had awakened; the result of the liar’s relief at not being caught; the joy of the man who has seen in himself the surge of a desire he no longer imagined possible in his life and has reached a satisfaction he didn’t recall ever experiencing. As they’d often done when the children were small, that afternoon they walked with them on the path that led through pine groves and thickets of rockrose to the irrigation pond — the reservoir that had fed the old electrical power plant, a half-abandoned building at the edge. From time to time they caught sight of an unsociable custodian who once frightened the children and served as a character in their stories about enchanted houses beside a lake. That Ignacio Abel had so readily agreed to the excursion was another indication of his good mood and not merely his impatience to leave the close familial ambience, which after the snores of siesta culminated in praying the rosary, followed by a comforting snack of thick hot chocolate and anise biscuits, the work of Doña Cecilia’s legendary confectionery talent. The four of them, away from the others, seemed to commemorate an earlier time it wasn’t difficult to imagine as happier, the summers when the children were small, when their hands had to be held on the path and they tired so quickly that their father carried them on his shoulders, so small they had to be watched constantly so they wouldn’t go in the deep parts of the pond. They played Hansel and Gretel and left breadcrumbs along the path, and on the way back they would see whether birds had eaten them. But if they went too far into the game, the boy would burst into tears because he really was afraid his parents would abandon them, and he’d put his arms around Adela’s legs, his little face red and wet with tears while his sister laughed. The water in the pond had a green transparency and reflected on its surface the tops of the pines and the dark mass of the brick building that once housed turbines. The October sun was still high, gilding the bluish distances, the soft afternoon colors. The children looked for flat stones along the edge, then threw them at well-aimed angles over the smooth surface of the water, shouting their disagreement, returning to the old complicity of games now that both had left early childhood but were closer to it than either imagined. His father’s camera hung around Miguel’s neck, and as they walked in the woods he imagined he was making his way through the Amazon jungle or the heart of Africa, a solitary reporter because his sister didn’t want to join him in the game. Sitting on the grass in the warm afternoon air, Ignacio Abel and Adela also seemed to have returned to an earlier time, the young father and mother the children see at a protective distance, engaged in their mysterious conversations but also vigilant, perhaps anxious, afraid an accident or a mishap might occur if they looked away even for a moment from the children. How strange to have Adela so close when she didn’t know anything, to hold her open, melancholy gaze and not awaken any suspicion in her, to speak to her so naturally with no need to pretend or lie. He observed Adela while he listened to her. As had happened a few nights earlier in the Residence, he saw her as he hadn’t seen her for some time, precisely the time when she lost the last embers of her youth. A click sounded and Miguel had taken their picture from the edge of the pond.
“Are you really planning to go to America next year? And can you take us with you?”
She knew him too well not to be aware that his mood could be temporary. She was grateful for the gestures of tenderness, the quick kiss on the lips, the hand at her waist, but she protected herself instinctively against disappointment and at the same time protected her children, especially the boy, who was more fragile and also closer to her, with a more excitable imagination: now, at the pond’s edge, he talked to his sister about traveling to America on ocean liners or airplanes, made exaggerated gestures with his arms to suggest the size of things, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty.