Antonio Hill - The Good Suicides

In any case, the coldness in his sister never ceased to shock him: the fact that Sara had decided to end her life in such a gruesome way had gone from being a tragedy to an inconvenience in a matter of minutes. Sílvia’s face, which he read as if it were his own, had reflected this shift of feeling. Those who didn’t know her as well, however, would have sworn that his twin sister’s serious expression showed feeling for the death of a person who occupied that uncertain terrain that exists in work relationships: not loved as a friend, of course, but more than a simple acquaintance. In the words of Sílvia herself, who in her role as Director of Human Resources had sent around a communiqué to the whole company, Sara Mahler had been “an esteemed colleague whom we will all miss.” Obviously, the circular made no mention of the cause of death, although-Víctor was sure-the rumors had already begun to spread by mid-morning. And by this time on a Monday evening, gone half past eight, all of Alemany Cosmetics would know that Sara Mahler, personal assistant to the MD, had committed suicide. And that her body was in an autopsy room, in pieces.

The image made him shiver, made his stomach churn. He wanted to get home, embrace Paula. The journey felt unending; he realized they had been stationary for several minutes. A dozen cars ahead the red light went to green without a single car moving, then jeered at them with amber and, when finally a car managed to cross, returned to its original red without the least trace of pity. The taxi driver let out a string of curses that Víctor decided to ignore: it suited him to isolate himself from the problems of others. And then, with this reflection, Sara Mahler’s worried expression one of the last times he spoke to her came into his head. It had been just after the company Christmas dinner.

It’s late. Night falls so early that he feels as if it’s only six, although the clock on the desk shows it’s actually twenty to nine. When he lifts his head from the reps’ reports he’s looking over, a task he wants to finish before leaving, he notices that Sara has entered the office. She has surely knocked and he hasn’t even heard her. Tired, he smiles at her.

“Still here?” He knows his assistant usually stays until he leaves. He has never asked her to: Sara seems to have assumed it to be an inherent obligation of her post.

“Yes …” Unlike her usual self, Sara is stammering. Finally she decides, halfheartedly: “I wanted to talk to you, but it’s getting late. Better if I leave it till tomorrow.”

Yes, thinks Víctor. Tomorrow. The chat can be postponed; he wants to put a full stop to the day and go home. What he says, however, is very different.

“No, come in and sit down.” He signals the papers and smiles again, without much enthusiasm. “This can wait.”

Having her sit on the other side of the desk seems strange to him, because Sara usually remains standing. The solemnity of his assistant’s gestures worries him a little, and for a moment he is assaulted by the vague fear that she might put forward a serious problem to him at this hour. She is uncomfortable, that’s obvious: rigid, sitting on the edge of the chair. He changes his glasses and then, when he finally sees her clearly, he notices that her eyes are red.

“Has something happened? Is there a problem?”

Sara looks at him as if what she is going to tell him is vitally important. She remains silent, sad, then finally speaks.

“It’s about Gaspar.” She says it quickly but with no force.

An expression of disgust appears on Víctor’s face. He doesn’t want to talk about Gaspar Ródenas. In fact, he’d prefer never to have heard that name. He changes his tone, adds a hard note to his voice.

“Sara. The Ródenas thing”-he feels incapable of pronouncing his name-“was a tragedy. We will never understand it. It’s something that escapes human understanding. Best thing we can do is forget it.”

Although she nods her head as if she agrees, Víctor regrets having started this conversation. He looks away toward the street: he’d love to enjoy a more elegant view, like Diagonal; in the first moments of success, when the anti-cellulite cream, their star product, broke sales records, he thought of moving the offices to a more lofty location. In any case, although the inhospitable empty streets of the Zona Franca can be seen from this window, he still wants to leave the office, not bring up what to him seems a dark, gruesome subject.

“I know,” says Sara. “And I’ve tried. We all try … However …”

She stops herself; perhaps he still looks lost in thought, suddenly absent. She notices this, of course, and hangs her head.

“You don’t want to talk about this, do you?” asks Sara. A touch of disappointment makes her voice quiver.

“Not now, Sara.” He turns to her. “I understand that it was a shock for everyone. For me too. I trusted him, I promoted him.”

His tone conceals that what he says is not completely true: he’d given his vote to the other candidate. Sílvia and Octavi Pujades, Gaspar’s direct manager, had voted for him. And something in Sara’s face suggests that she knows it: a gleam in her eyes reveals that she doesn’t believe what he is saying. But Víctor lets this impression go and continues speaking, anxious to put an end to the subject.

“It’s impossible to know what goes on in people’s heads. Or what happens at home, behind closed doors. Ródenas just worked here. What he did, however horrible it seems to us, has nothing to do with us. And we should forget it, for the good of the company. So, in answer to your question, no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

In the last few minutes Sara has regained her usual composure. She is offended, thinks Víctor. Nevertheless, it is too late to back down, to ask her what she wanted to tell him. She doesn’t give him the option anyway. She murmurs an apology, gets up and walks to the door. She stops a moment before leaving. For an instant, Sara seems resolved to turn around, interrupt him again and let out what she had on her mind when she came in, point blank. She doesn’t. Víctor tries not to look directly at her so as not to invite her to unburden herself, but even so he notices that Sara’s face doesn’t express disappointment, or wounded pride, but sadness.

The taxi braked sharply on Nou de la Rambla, just in front of the address he’d given on getting in. Víctor paid and got out with a brusque good-bye and, although he was dying to see Paula, he stopped in front of the old-fashioned door, “with character” as she said, and took out his cell phone to call Sílvia. There were certain subjects that he didn’t wish to discuss at home and another that he didn’t wish to discuss with his sister, so to keep it brief he confined himself to giving her a recap of his interview with the inspector.

Kristin Herschdorfer loved Barcelona. She said this a number of times, as if her good opinion of the city might ingratiate her with the agent who had come to see her and talk to her about her roommate, when the reality was that Roger Fort wasn’t altogether comfortable in the City of Counts yet. To him it seemed big, full of people and not especially welcoming. This morning, for example, he’d circled several times to park the car near Collblanc market and then had taken a while to find Passatge Xile, the street where Sara Mahler had lived. And yet he understood that for this twenty-four-year-old girl born in Amsterdam the fact that the sun shone in January was already a big point in Barcelona’s favor. Kristin was attending a course in Spanish at the university, not very far from her house, with the intention of starting a master’s in renewable energy in September. Like the majority of foreigners, the Dutch girl was slightly bemused by the bilingualism that prevailed in the city.