She raised her head from the back of the seat and looked out of the window. Out there, the sky was dark blue, almost black; nevertheless, in the spot where the sun had just set there was a slash of green that looked like the sea and in which the clouds formed yellow islands, red harbours, white boats. She remembered the song they used to sing at school after trips to the coast:
Ixil ixilik dago kaian barrenean
ontzi txuri polit bat uraren gainean.
Eta zergatik, zergatik, zergatik
Zergatik negar egin,
zeruan izarra dago itsaso aldetik.
(The pretty white boat is in the harbour.
The pretty white boat is on the sea.
I don’t … I don’t want to cry.
Over the sea there’s a star in the sky.)
Above the green sea that she could see from the window there was a star, Venus, the one that collected up everything that had been scattered during the day and returned it home. She would have liked the star to do the same for her, to pick up all the fragments of her life, scattered here and there, and place them in an orderly fashion inside her, like clothes on the shelves of a wardrobe. But no star could do that.
The large woman gave a snort. When she looked at her closely, she realized that she was wearing a wig, slightly askew. It revealed the side of her head, which was completely bald.
As if she had noticed that someone was looking at her, the large woman changed position.
“Filthy whore!” she heard again. She wanted to forget about the incident on the stairs, but she couldn’t.
There were some headphones on the large woman’s lap. She picked them up and put them on. The screen that corresponded to her area of the bus was quite close, and she could see it easily.
“Why do you get into these messes?” the newspaper editor was saying to the beautiful journalist involved in investigating the deaths of the students. The editor was wearing braces and was sweating heavily. The woman was wearing a very elegant white dress.
“And what about you? Why do you get yourself into these messes?” replied the journalist in an aggressive tone.
“I don’t know what you mean, Miriam.”
“It’s so obvious, Jack. You’ve done everything you can to put me off the track, and that can only mean that you’re implicated too.”
“What do you mean, Miriam? You know perfectly well what my position on the matter is. I’ve always fought for a decent democracy in Puerto Rico! I’m still fighting for it.”
“Really? How exactly? By setting a deadly trap for two students?”
“Miriam, please! Think what you’re saying!”
The beautiful journalist opened her handbag and took out a photograph.
“Look at this, Jack,” she said to the editor, showing it to him. “They make an odd assortment, don’t you think? The one on the left is Cisneros, the most anti-nationalist politician in Puerto Rico. And the other one, in the second row, is Taylor, the FBI man who was sent here by Washington last year.”
“Come on, Miriam, don’t be so suspicious. They probably just happened to coincide at the same official dinner.”
“Exactly, Jack. It was an official dinner. The one that our newspaper organized a month ago.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“I think it has. Look who’s wearing a waiter’s uniform. Don’t you recognize him? Don’t you recognize that skinny boy? He’s a bit far from the camera, but even so there’s no mistaking him.”
“Who is he? I don’t know him.”
“He’s the third man, Jack, the third member of the group who supposedly tried to break up the military parade. He’s the traitor, Jack, the one who betrayed the other two.”
“He wasn’t a traitor, he was an infiltrator working with the police,” Irene said, removing the headphones and almost addressing the screen out loud. Then she closed her eyes and sighed. How many more times would she have to stumble over that word? How many more times would someone speak to her of betrayal before the day was over? Yes, Margarita was right. According to her, problems, especially if they were serious ones, acted like malignant magnets that attracted all kinds of painful particles:
“Say some man has left you. You turn on the radio and all the songs are about lost loves and how sad it is to lose a lover. Say you’ve got to have an operation. You open a newspaper and the first thing you see is an article all about the dangers of anaesthetics. Basically, life stinks.”
She didn’t feel inferior to anyone, on the contrary. She saw herself — she had said as much to Antonia and Margarita during some of their talks — as a person who had taken decisions, nine or ten important decisions in the space of about twenty years, and that record, regardless of whether the decisions were right or wrong, was, in her opinion, an achievement, because it was the opposite of what mediocrities do, people who just let themselves drift, never deciding anything, just going where the current takes them, whichever current happens along. Nevertheless, words like “betrayal” intimidated her and made her doubt herself. Not because there was necessarily any truth in them — in that respect, her conscience was clear — but because they were essentially grubby words, words that always left a stain, even when they emerged a penny a dozen from the lips of a complete and utter bastard or were written by the hand of a fool. The policeman with the red tie had called her a “traitor”. Many others would do the same. On the walls of Bilbao, some adolescent would doubtless put the accusation in writing.
She remembered a letter that she had read months before in the newspaper. In it, a militant who had opted for the same path she was taking pleaded for respect and published his own past record for the benefit of those who despised what he had done, his so-called “repentance”, setting out everything that he had gone through in his fight for an ideal. A letter written in vain? She thought so. As individuals, people weren’t bad, but in a group, in the safety of anonymity, people became monsters. Could you expect compassion from a monster? Only in stories — fairy stories.
She sighed again. She didn’t want to dwell on the subject any longer, not until more time had passed. Besides, she had quite enough to deal with on the bus, with the two policemen. Would they approach her again? Would they just give up for the present? She mustn’t think about it. It was best to pass the time watching the film.
On the screen, the infiltrator who had pushed the two university students to their deaths was smiling at the journalist.
“You’re very beautiful. I’d like to be your friend. I’m nicer than I seem,” he said.
“I want to know exactly who you’re working for,” replied the journalist very gravely.
Suddenly, she remembered that there were other channels, apart from the one connected to the video, and she twiddled the knob on the arm of her seat. The dialogue between the infiltrator and the journalist broke off and was replaced by flute music. It wasn’t any ordinary flute, it had the deep tones of a harmonium. The musician — she imagined him as a shepherd playing in some new Arcadia — lengthened out each note and the melody came and went, as if forming waves, ever slower, ever deeper.
She looked at the large woman. She was still in the same position, her head erect and her mouth half-open.
“I wonder if she’s dead,” she thought. Just at that moment, the woman muttered something and shifted in her seat.
She felt tired again. The tension of her encounter with the two policemen had drained her of energy. Or was it the flute? She had the sense that the sound reaching her through the headphones was gradually emptying her of feelings.
She looked out of the window. Outside, everything was in darkness, and all she could see were the lights of the cars coming in the opposite direction and what they illuminated. She screwed up her eyes to see better, but she still couldn’t really see anything clearly. And Venus? Was it still in the sky? She wanted to look up, but she couldn’t. Her eyelids were growing heavy. Shortly afterwards, she fell asleep and began to dream.