Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

When he saw her leave he knew his marriage was dead. If up to then the possibility had remained that their relationship might emerge from its coma, that Ruth’s escapade with someone of her own sex was only that, a fleeting adventure, he knew now without doubt that they’d just buried it. He groped in the dark for a cigarette and smoked it alone, sitting on the floor, leaning back against the sofa, contemplating the upturned glass and the definitively empty bottle.

This time the good-bye was easier. She half-turned and got into the car as he was putting the key in the door. Through the rearview mirror she saw him limping with the bag in his hand. Inexplicably, she felt something toward him that seemed very much like tenderness.

He should have gone to bed some time ago, but age insisted on robbing him of hours of sleep and reading was the only thing that helped him get through those long evenings. However, despite having a book he liked in his hands, that night Father Fèlix Castells couldn’t concentrate. Comfortable in his favorite armchair, in the silent flat in Passeig Sant Joan which had been his home since infancy, his eyes, tired for years, seemed incapable of following the lines of the novel by Iris Murdoch, an author he’d discovered not very long ago, whose entire oeuvre he was reading. Finally, sick of trying, he rose and walked toward the bar where he kept the brandy; he poured himself a generous glass and, after taking a gulp, returned to the armchair. The only light in the room came from the lamp, and contemplating the book’s white cover, he couldn’t help shuddering. Iris. Always Iris. He half-closed his eyes and saw the message on Joana’s computer that he’d read while she was dressing, hardly able to believe it. He’d had to struggle to contain himself, to not erase it. Iris couldn’t write messages. Iris was dead.

It was he who entered the pool, who turned her over and saw her little face, blue with cold, who futilely tried to blow a little air through frozen lips that had already closed forever. When he turned around, with a shaken face and the little girl in his arms, he met the terrified gaze of his nephew. He wanted someone to take him out of there, save him from that horrifying sight, but Marc seemed rooted to the ground. Only then did he notice something surrounding his body and, almost unable to believe it, saw that there were numerous dolls floating in the same blue water.

He groped for the glass of brandy and took another gulp, but couldn’t chase away that chill which knows no seasons. Iris’s drenched little body, her blue lips. The dolls lying around her, like a macabre court. Images he thought he’d forgotten, but now, since San Juan, since that other recent tragedy, plagued him more than ever. Nothing could be done to combat them: he tried to evoke pleasant thoughts, of happy moments. . Marc alive, Marc safe and sound, though with that distant, eternally sad expression. He’d done what he could, but the well of melancholy remained, immune to his efforts, ready to overflow at the smallest sarcastic comment on Enric’s part. How many times had he told his brother that irony wasn’t the way to bring up a child? It made no difference: Enric didn’t seem to understand that sarcasm could hurt more than a slap. That home needed a woman. A mother. If Joana had been with them things would have been different. And Glòria had come too late: her arrival had contributed to softening Enric’s bitterness, but the damage, to Marc, was already done. The subsequent adoption of Natàlia served to seal the new family circle, excluding that timid and sullen, solitary and unaffectionate boy. His sister-in-law had tried, although perhaps more out of a sense of duty than from genuine affection for Marc. It wasn’t

THE SUMMER OF DEAD TOYS 55

fair to criticize Glòria, he thought: she’d done what she could in those years, which hadn’t been easy for her either. Her inability to conceive naturally had meant a torment of medical tests culminating in a lengthy adoption process. These things moved slowly, and although Eric’s position had managed to speed up part of the application, for Glòria the wait had been interminable. She was so happy after she brought the little girl home. In Fèlix’s opinion, she was the perfect mother. When he saw her with her daughter, Fèlix felt at peace with the world. It was a fleeting sensation, but one so comforting he sought it out whenever possible. Its effect on him lasted for hours, dispelling other ghosts: it was thanks to moments like these he could continue forgiving the sins of the world. He could even forgive himself. . But not now: that effect had vanished after Marc’s death, as if now nothing could console him. The image of his nephew, lying motionless on the patio flagstones, came to mind every time he tried to relax. One night he even saw him fall, arms outspread, trying to find something in the air to grasp, and he felt his fear as he neared the hard ground. Other nights he would see him at the window and glimpse the shadow of a girl with long blonde hair; he would try to warn him from below, he would shout his name but not get there in time. The shadow would push the boy and he’d shoot out with an almost superhuman force before falling at his feet with a dull thud, an unmistakable and fatal crunch, followed by a guffaw. He lifted his head and there she was: as drenched as when she was taken out of the water, laughing, finally getting her revenge.

Héctor had never much trusted those who presume to know how to treat human neuroses. Not that he considered them frauds or irresponsible: he simply believed it improbable that an individual, equally subject to emotions, prejudices and manias, might have the capacity to delve into the winding paths of the minds of others. And that idea, rooted inside him for as long as he could remember, wasn’t breaking down in the least now that for the first time in his life he was attending the clinic of one of them as a patient.

He observed the youth sitting on the other side of the desk, trying to control his skepticism so as not to seem rude, although at the same time it seemed strange that this kid-yes, kid-fresh from university and dressed informally in jeans and a white checked shirt, should have in his hands the file of a forty-three-year-old inspector, who, if he’d had an unlucky break in adolescence, could even be his father. The notion made him think of Guillermo and his son’s reaction years before when his tutor at school suggested that it wouldn’t be amiss for them to take him to a psychologist who-his exact words-“might help him open up to others.” Ruth wasn’t a big fan of shrinks either, but they decided they’d nothing to lose, although they certainly both knew Guillermo socialized with whoever he felt like and didn’t bother with anyone who didn’t arouse his interest. He and Ruth laughed for weeks at the outcome. The psychologist had asked their son to draw a house, a tree and a family; Guille, who at the age of six was going through a phase of adoring comics and was already demonstrating the same skill for graphic art as his mother, threw himself enthusiastically into the task, albeit with his usual selective disposition: he didn’t like trees so didn’t bother with that one, but instead drew a medieval castle as the house, and Batman, Catwoman and The Penguin as the family. He didn’t want to imagine what conclusions the poor woman drew on seeing the supposed mother imagined in a leather suit with a whip in her hand, but they were both sure that she’d kept the drawing for her thesis on the dysfunctional modern family, or something like that.

He’d smiled without noticing; he saw it in the inquiring look the psychologist was giving him through metal-rimmed glasses. Héctor cleared his throat and decided to feign seriousness; he was almost sure, however, that the boy opposite him still read comics in his spare time.