Probably not
I want to ask you a favor
What
Tonight
What do you want?
To talk to you
Talk now
I want to show you something
What
Some videos
Send them to me
It’s dangerous
I can’t go out
Yes you can
Not today
Noon tomorrow at the club
II
First thing in the morning on Wednesday, Iona turned on the computer and got a message. “I really enjoyed meeting you.” That was the second guy to contact her since the accident. Some loser, at least ten years older than her, some guy she didn’t know from Adam, had sent her a message he’d written to himself: I did it, I dangled the bait. Period. Wasn’t there an understood grieving period, some buffer from the world to protect her from these little violations?
Because there was Nil Dalmau too; she hadn’t seen him in years, and now he resurfaced looking a fright, made a date to meet her at the club, showed her the most unpleasant videos ever, and asked her if they were illegal.
“I would turn you in myself,” she’d said, “if I could think past what’s happening to me.”
She didn’t understand anything, and these two guys were helping a lot with that. The world had lost all logic. It was a desert; it had only been three days since the accident, but there was a growing feeling that a war had been lost. Reality plowed ahead, establishing laws that had nothing to do with the ones that’d governed it up until then.
That morning she went back to the university. She left Vidreres after seven, just as the sun was starting to shine, and she saw the tree for the first time since the accident. She knew it was on that road, but avoiding it would have meant a fifteen-kilometer detour to the freeway. She had to face up to that route today, or she wouldn’t be able to for a long time. She fixed her eyes straight ahead, through the windshield, and avoided looking at the asphalt to keep from seeing any shards of glass glimmering on the ground or any skid marks. She tried to look at the sky — she didn’t want to see a wound on the tree’s trunk — but it was no use. They had tied a bouquet to it with the whitest ribbon they could find. She saw the wilted flowers for a moment as short as the one when Jaume had seen that same trunk before slamming into its previous flowerless incarnation. The trunk of his own cherry tree. Who had put the bouquet there? Who had taken the liberty of rubbing the tree in her face, with all its bare branches? Didn’t anyone think of her or the boys’ parents? Change the road’s course, erase it from the map, saw down that plane tree, she didn’t want to see the accident every time she passed by.
Hidden, up until then, behind Jaume, Xavi started to make his demands. What about me, Iona? Now you’re acting like we don’t know each other. Do you think I suffered any less than my brother?
Not even the corpses thought twice before violating her space.
I have something important to tell you, Iona. It was all his fault. I had nothing to do with it. It wouldn’t have happened to me. He stole my life, Iona. I was his brother, and he stole everything from me. And all because he didn’t want to let me touch his car. How was any of this my fault? I wouldn’t have killed him, Iona. I’ve had accidents, sure, but never bad enough to kill anyone, much less kill my brother. I would have been more careful; I would have been able to regain control of the wheel. I was the younger one, more innocent, we were two years apart; think about what two years means, when you only live to twenty. How could I return to the world now? Who would I trust? Did you notice how they looked at you in the church? Not my parents, my poor parents, they lost two sons, one as a punishment for the other. But you dated Jaume for years. No one was as close to him as you were. You are the heiress, the next in line. Think what he left you. He was driving. It was his fault. Why didn’t he lend me the car? He always treated me like a little kid. He had to kill me. Imagine, if he’d just killed himself, the little brother would have ended up growing past the older one. Think about me, Iona. I’m here too. Didn’t you see how people were looking at you? He was your boyfriend, Iona; I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be by his side on Saturday night. Remember me.
The news had spread through the department, and it was worse than she had expected. All morning her fellow students took advantage of her. It was a practical lesson: How will we treat Iona? How do we treat a client who’s just lost her dog? Or a dog that’s just lost its owner?
“I just wanted to say that I’m so sorry,” said one student, using the exact same words the trucker had the day before.
“Iona, are you okay?” Yes, she’s fine, compared to the others.
“Don’t worry about not answering my messages, I understand.”
Those looks that wanted and taunted.
She didn’t think she had the heart to stay in their shared apartment. She went back home, having to drive over that road again, but this time she was prepared. She knew which tree it was, and she was able to save herself from seeing the wound again. She sped up and went right by.
“What’s wrong with guys?” she’d asked her sister. “How is it even possible that they’re already hitting on me?”
“Don’t ask me, you’re the one studying veterinary science.”
In the midafternoon she went out to take a walk through the fields. Studying was impossible. By the door of the house she found Seda, a mutt who’d shown up at Can Bou a year before with a broken paw, probably from the road. It had been shortly after Frare’s death. Iona and her sister cleaned her up, took care of her injury, and gave her a name. Seda had gotten used to lying on the porch; she couldn’t keep up with the other dogs because she still limped. It was comforting to find her there, day and night; she had a spot reserved for her under the cherry tree.
The bitch wagged her tail with her ears back, and rubbed up against Iona’s legs. When she kneeled down to pet her, they looked into each other’s eyes. The eyes of an animal are terrible. Riding a horse you get the impression that the horse’s legs are your own, you mentally merge with their gait and become a centaur. But through their eyes you go beyond merging, they are tunnels to a shared world where you can’t tell who is what.
A horse neighed softly when it saw Iona was leaving the house without taking the car. She turned around and went past the stables to stroke the horses. Brushing their manes, she saw herself in the well that was the four black balls of their eyes, and then left the building with the dog following her. They went past the two cherry trees, through the gate, and took a dirt road into the fields.
Don’t even think about going near town; she didn’t want to run in to anyone. The road gently rose and fell again; she could hear the freeway in the distance, but, except for the dog, Iona was quite alone. I wish I could just give in, she thought, kill Jaume right here and now, and lock myself away to cry for fifteen days straight, drop out of school, and change my life. But how could I do that to him?
She took paths that she didn’t even take on horseback through the green fields; she followed a dirt trail through the forest to Can Salvi. She crossed under the highway, passed the offices of El Rec Clar magazine — the plain was a thin slice of fields — and entered the forest again, following the same path. She knew the way, and went up the hill where, as girls, she and her sister searched for mushrooms with their parents on November Sundays — the only outings they did as a family, right before holing up in the house for winter — and she reached Sant Iscle castle. It was four walls with two circular towers, one of which was reconstructed all the way up to its battlements. They had archeological digs there, last summer they found a children’s graveyard, and everyone went to see the skeletons: a dozen skeletons like fish fossils that came from underground; a dozen little skeletons with earth for flesh; the whole mountain, the whole planet was their bodies. She had gone there with Jaume to see the skeletons of the children, medieval skeletons, from before the castle had been built. . Why were they buried together, and outside the town? That day she had told Jaume about the cherry tree at Can Bou, expecting him to tell her where their cherry tree was at Can Batlle, or their almond tree, or whatever tree or rock it was. But the question remained: why had they buried those children together, outside of town?