‘But what for?’ said Valencia. ‘How did that person get to your house? What is she asking you for? What’s going on, that’s what I want to know.’
‘Nothing’s going on.’
‘Of course it is. Either tell me, Javier, or I’m not helping you.’
‘Then don’t help me,’ said Mallarino. ‘And go to hell.’
‘Look, Javier, try to see it from my point of view,’ said Valencia. ‘This is not normal. Or do you think it is? Does it seem normal to you for that girl to appear just like that?’
‘She’s not a girl.’
‘For her to appear so many years later and ask you for this?’
‘She hasn’t asked me for anything,’ said Mallarino. ‘This idea is mine.’
‘How’s that?’
‘It’s to help her. She doesn’t remember.’
Mallarino then remained in the company of the silence of the phone line, that imperfect silence like darkness for blind people. In his imagination, Valencia was one of those nineteenth-century caricatures where the person appears covered in question marks and with an intense expression of confusion, and then he imagined Valencia’s head converted into a silhouette, a black line, and those three words, She doesn’t remember, banging against the line, desperate flies in a glass box. After a long few seconds, longer still because time, when one is on the phone, cannot be measured on the features of one’s interlocutor — one doesn’t notice the barely perceptible changes, the warnings, the intentions sketched across them — Valencia let out a couple of grunts, something like a clearing of the throat, like a contained belch. ‘Ah,’ he said then, ‘I see what’s going on. The girl doesn’t know.’
‘She’s not a girl,’ said Mallarino.
‘She doesn’t know, that’s the problem. She was never told.’
‘She doesn’t remember.’
‘And you want to help her.’
‘Help her to remember.’
‘Help her to find out,’ said Valencia as if he were spitting out a caramel he was choking on. ‘Because if she doesn’t know, then neither do you.’
Something resembling relief: that’s what Mallarino felt. Perhaps because someone else, and not him, had said what he didn’t dare say. Because if she doesn’t know, then neither do you: was it not incredible, and also fascinating, that they were talking about the past? What was not known now — now that Rodrigo Valencia mentioned it — was something that in the past had been known, about which there had been certainty at some point, and so certain had Mallarino been that he’d gone as far as to draw a cartoon about it. Was what appeared in the press not true, beyond all doubt or uncertainty? Was a page in the newspaper not the supreme proof that something had happened? Mallarino imagined the past as a watery creature with imprecise contours, a sort of deceitful, dishonest amoeba that can’t be investigated, for, looking for it again under the microscope, we find that it’s not there, and we suspect that it’s gone, and we soon realize that it has changed shape and is now impossible to recognize. Because if she doesn’t know, then neither do you. In such a way that the certainties acquired at some moment in the past could in time stop being certainties: something could happen, a fortuitous or deliberate event, and suddenly all evidence is invalidated, the truth ceases to be true, the seen ceases to have been seen and the occurrence to have occurred: all lost their place in time and space; were devoured and passed on to another world, or to another dimension of our world, a dimension we didn’t know. But where was it? Where did the past go when it changed? In which folds of our world were they hiding, cowardly and ashamed, the events that had been unable to remain, to keep being true in spite of the wear and tear of time, to win their place in human history? Because if she doesn’t know, then neither do you. But the problem with Samanta Leal wasn’t that she didn’t know, but that she didn’t remember: that memory, her childhood memory, had suffered certain distortions, certain — how to put it — interferences. It was a question of restoring it: for this, and for no other reason, they needed to speak with Cuéllar’s widow, ask her a couple of simple questions, get a couple of simple answers from her.
‘It’s not for me,’ said Mallarino. ‘It’s for her. I want to help her.’
‘But have you thought this through, Javier?’ asked Valencia.
‘There’s not much to think through.’
‘Have you thought about the consequences? Don’t tell me there won’t be any consequences. Don’t tell me you haven’t imagined them. Let’s see, let me see: the girl remembers nothing?’
‘She’s not a girl. And no, she doesn’t remember anything.’
‘I see. For her it’s as if nothing had happened.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Except that it did happen, Javier.’
Mallarino said nothing.
‘It did happen,’ said Valencia, ‘and we all saw it.’
What strange arrogance moved, like the undertow near the shore, beneath those apparently simple words, so vague, so everyday. The arrogance was to simulate or even to covet those certainties, as if Valencia could now not only be sure of what he himself saw, but what others saw, others who, twenty-eight years later, were absent or gone or in any case silent. The memory of others: how much he would gladly pay at this moment for a ticket to that spectacle! There, thought Mallarino, lay the origin of our dissatisfaction and our sadness: in the impossibility of sharing memory with others.
‘But that doesn’t matter,’ said Mallarino. ‘At least, that doesn’t matter to me. It’s her. The poor thing has a right to know.’
‘Oh, it’s just for her.’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘Just for her, yeah,’ said Valencia. ‘What do you take me for, an idiot?’
Mallarino said nothing.
‘You think I don’t realize?’ said Valencia. ‘Well, I do realize. I see perfectly well. What might happen now if nothing happened that night. What could change for you. And I understand, believe me, I understand your worry, at least in principle.’
‘I’m not worried.’
‘I think you are. Because if nothing happened, and you did that drawing. . Of course, of course I understand. But can I tell you something? We were all there. And can I tell you something else? The last thing you want to do is to start asking questions. You’re not guilty of anything, Javier — ’
‘But who’s talking about guilt?’ Mallarino cut him off. ‘I’m not talking about guilt, nobody’s talking about guilt. I’ll tell you one more time, Rodrigo: it’s not for me. It’s for her.’
Silence. A moment later, when Valencia spoke, it was as if his voice had fallen to the floor: a stepped-on, worn-out, used-up voice.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘And so the idea is to find the widow.’
‘Yes.’
‘And speak to her, ask her.’
‘Yes.’
‘But how stupid,’ Valencia said wearily. ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Mallarino. ‘We just — ’
‘What idiots,’ said Valencia.
‘Hey, just a minute.’
‘What an idiot you are. I won’t say anything about her, I don’t know what’s in her head. But you’re an idiot. And what are you going to do, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do. But that’s something — ’
‘You’re going to knock on her door and she’s going to invite you in, how are you, how’s it going, and is she going to offer you a coffee? Or is the girl going to introduce herself: pleased to meet you, señora, I’d like to know what it was your husband did to me. Is that it?’