Holding her cigarette between her lips, she put two of the books from the table back in her suitcase, the novel by Stendhal and the essay by Oteiza. Then she looked at those remaining in the pile and chose another two books: the anthology of Chinese poetry and the collection of poems by Emily Dickinson.
Though far apart, the two hearts
love each other in silence, without speaking.
The woman sews by the light of the candle,
the man walks beneath the moon.
As soon as he reaches the stairs, the man knows
that his wife is still awake.
A noise is heard in the silence of the night:
the noise of scissors falling to the floor.
* * *
Reading that poem took her back to prison. She could see herself lying on the bunk in her cell on a Friday or Saturday night, listening to the laughter of people walking along some street near the prison, listening to that laughter and thinking that, despite everything, love was what mattered most in life. Thinking that the cliché was true, that the Chinese poems were telling the truth, that even the crassest of songs were right about that.
Her eyes drifted back to the window. The hills that had succeeded the grey desert were covered in scrub, apart from a few cultivated areas, but they were still empty. For a moment, she thought about the insects, mice and birds that must live there. Then she thought about the silence that would surround the lives of those beings, and about how hard that life would be. But there was no need to pity them: insects, mice and birds were very strong creatures, prepared to face up to any misfortune.
It was quiet inside the bus too. Nothing was happening, everything was still. The film on the video had ended. The two nuns were dozing in their seats. The hostess was reading a magazine. The passenger who looked like a boxer had gone back to his seat.
“I was quite right,” she thought, remembering the letter that she had posted in Barcelona. No, she didn’t want to see her friend of recent years again. Fuck off, Andoni. Solitude was preferable to a mediocre relationship. In fact, anything was better than that.
She put out her cigarette and rubbed her face again. She had to put a brake on the impetus driving her thoughts along. She was thinking too much, remembering too much, she was getting too tired.
“I must get a grip on myself,” she thought. But she knew how difficult that was. After four years in prison, surrounded always by the same objects and by the same people, subject to the same timetable day after day, everything that she encountered outside seemed sharp and violent and dragged her spirits off on a kind of roller-coaster ride in which, with dizzying speed, white succeeded black, euphoria succeeded depression, joy succeeded sadness. The worst thing was that these ups and downs wore her out, sapped the energy that she was going to need from tomorrow onwards in the real world, not in the world of her dreams or on that bus travelling along an anonymous, almost abstract motorway. Would she find work? Would they have her back at the hospital where she used to work before? They would not. Or so it seemed from what her father had said in a letter; the new intake of nurses had filled all the posts, the good and the bad.
The bus began to brake and she suddenly found herself looking at the driver of the car that was overtaking them at that moment. He was a slim, well-dressed young man and the back seat of his car was full of newspapers. What did he do? Did he have a permanent job? How much would he earn a month? And how much would nurses earn a month now? The car drove on and the bus turned off to the right. They were approaching a service area. Shortly afterwards, the hostess picked up her microphone and made an announcement to the passengers. The stop would last half an hour.
The bus drove straight past the petrol station and the lorry park, over to the area in front of the motel and the supermarket. There was another bus belonging to the same company parked there, the bus doing the same route in reverse, from Bilbao to Barcelona.
The hostess picked up the microphone again and explained that they would be making the usual change, she and the driver would move over to the other bus, while the hostess and the driver who had come from Bilbao would move into theirs. She wished them a good journey and thanked them on behalf of the company.
“That’s good news,” she said under her breath, thinking about the promised change, and getting up out of her seat. That was one of the advantages that the bus had over prison. You didn’t get stuck with certain people, the unpleasant hostesses were only with you for half the journey.
The passengers on the upper deck started coming down the metal stairs. She picked up her cigarettes and the book by Emily Dickinson and hurried to the door. She wanted to get out as quickly as possible and to be the first at the counter in the cafeteria, so as not to waste a single moment of that half-hour break. She would buy a drink and a sandwich and go and sit on a grassy mound that she had seen as they passed the petrol station. It seemed like a good place from which to study the landscape.
There were lots of cats at the entrance to the motel cafeteria and one of them walked over to her as soon as she got off the bus. It had a black head and back and a white front. It was battered and scarred.
“What makes you think I’ve got any food? I haven’t bought anything yet,” she said as she passed it. The cat followed her, its eyes fixed on her hands. “Don’t be silly. These aren’t edible things. This is a book and this is a cigarette packet,” she added. Before she had finished what she was saying, the cat shot off towards a passenger who was getting off the bus carrying a sandwich in his hand.
The counter in the cafeteria was very long and the servers were placed at about three-yard intervals. The two at the end were free and she went over to them.
“I’ll have one of those sandwiches and two cans of Heineken,” she said.
“What sort of sandwich do you want?” asked one of the servers, lifting the cover on the display cabinet on the counter and picking up a pair of tongs. Almost at the same time, the other took the beers out of the fridge and set them before her. They worked really fast. “There’s salad, ham and cheese, cheese, tuna and mayonnaise, anchovy, egg and bacon.”
As he named the different sandwiches, he tapped them with the tongs. She found it hard to decide. She was bewildered by such variety.
As they came into the cafeteria, the other passengers formed two lines, one going down to the toilets, the other going over to the counter to order something. A very large woman waved to her from the queue for the toilets.
“Who’s that?” she thought, responding to the wave with a nod of her head. The woman’s face seemed familiar. Where had she seen her before? In Bilbao, before she was sent to prison?
She hurriedly left the cafeteria and went over to the grassy knoll next to the petrol station. She didn’t want to meet anyone from her previous life; even before she had reached Bilbao and her parents’ house, she was already dreading the inevitable comments from the neighbours who had known her since she was a child, how are you, don’t you worry, you’ll soon forget about prison. Even more than their remarks she was dreading the replies she would have to make, smiling, playing dumb, pretending that she didn’t know what they were really thinking, poor thing, what’s she going to do now, if she wasn’t divorced at least she’d have something to fall back on, her father doesn’t deserve all this trouble at his age.
“Are you going for a walk?” she heard someone say as she passed the supermarket next to the cafeteria. This time it was the two nuns who greeted her.