Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“Valentina hates flowers,” says Giraut.

Five minutes later, Giraut is sitting on a folding chair with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. In front of the folding chair where Valentina Parini is sitting. For some reason, Giraut had imagined his visit with Valentina would take place in a sunroom with views of a flower garden. One of those sunrooms where meetings with psychiatric patients and their loved ones take place in Hollywood movies. In the midst of a vaguely melancholy atmosphere. Watching as patients stroll through the garden on their caregivers' arms. Instead, Giraut and Valentina's meeting takes place in the first-floor bathroom of the girls' wing. In the common area between the toilet stalls and the long sink with a horizontal mirror that covers the wall in front of the stalls. Leaning against the back wall, a day nurse serves as chaperone for the meeting.

“Are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable in another chair?” Giraut fondles his bouquet of flowers absently.

Valentina's eyes are red and her face is swollen, like that of an adult who has just gotten up after a night of little sleep. She isn't wearing her green plastic glasses with one lens covered. Without her glasses and with her eyes swollen, her face takes on an unexpectedly grown-up look.

“I tried that thing where you don't swallow the pills and put them under the mattress,” says Valentina in a low voice. “But they caught me and now they give me shots that make me sleep all night.” She shrugs her shoulders. “I don't care. Their drugs don't work. They don't make me drool or spend all day looking at the wall or anything like that.” She looks around her. “Although sometimes I do it, when I know that they're watching me. This is the only place on the whole floor without cameras. The only safe place to talk.”

Lucas Giraut can't think of any reason why Valentina isn't wearing her green plastic glasses with one lens covered. Nor can he explain exactly why Valentina's face has suddenly taken on some indefinite element that is more appropriate to adults.

“Those are the same flowers my mother brought me.” Valentina points to the flowers with her chin. “Those are the same flowers everybody brought me.”

Giraut shrugs his shoulders and throws the bouquet of flowers into the metal wastebasket next to the sink with the horizontal mirror. Marcia Parini has also received citations from the same redheaded, sickly-looking lawyer to testify in the preliminary hearings of the trial that Estefanía “Fanny” Giraut's lawyers have begun. The parties involved in the trial, in mutual agreement, are also considering the possibility of calling Valentina Parini to be present in said hearings. In the case that the doctors decide that it wouldn't be harmful to Valentina's treatment. The nurse chaperone stares at the bouquet inside the metal wastebasket. According to Giraut's lawyer, it is likely that Fanny Giraut's lawyer will try to discredit Marcia Parini as a mother unfit for custody of her daughter. It is also possible that they will bring up, as an aggravating factor in the case, a supposed romantic relationship between Marcia and Lucas Giraut.

“When they caught me hiding my pills they took away Stephen King's New Novel.” Valentina lowers her voice and moves closer to Lucas to speak to him in a confidential tone. “I have to get it back. My mother brought me another copy on the sly but they caught her, too. I need you to find a way to bring it to me. They have cameras everywhere. And microphones. It's almost impossible to hide stuff.”

Lucas Giraut looks out of the corner of his eye at the nurse chaperone seated at the back of the bathroom. She looks back at him with a neutral gaze and nods her head almost imperceptibly. The nurse chaperone doesn't look like the nurses in psychiatric centers that Lucas Giraut has seen in movies. She isn't stout or frowning and she looks like she'd rather be somewhere else. She's younger than Giraut and has svelte legs and the badly dyed hair and excessive makeup that one usually associates with women from working-class suburbs.

“I know how to get it in,” says Giraut. “But I don't know when I can come visit you again. My mother is trying to kick me out of the company.”

Valentina makes a gesture with her hand that is powerfully reminiscent of that gesture with which adults dismiss obviously irrelevant questions. Questions that are insignificant given the gravity of the circumstances. Valentina signals for Giraut to bring his ear close to her mouth. He does.

“I've discovered how they do it,” says Valentina in a whisper. “How they make everything work. Or make it seem like everything is working. They divide the population into five groups. Each group with their special instructions. There are the Repairers. Like the people that work here. The doctors and all that. There are the Developers. The scientists and the engineers and the people that work building machines and preparing their arrival. There are the Hunters. The ones who hunt people like us. They don't have to go around dressed as policemen or anything like that. It could be a little old lady that lives on your street and has known you all your life. Then there are the Providers, who make sure that they have food and all that. And the Priests. Who are the ones that talk to them and get their messages and create the transmissions for the population.” She pauses and moves a little bit away from Giraut's ear. “Those are the most dangerous.”

Giraut leans back against the chair. With his shoulders very straight and his arms crossed over his lap. He studies Valentina's soft face and straight hair over vaguely dull eyes. The nurse chaperone with too much makeup and svelte legs clears her throat.

“If you make her nervous I'm going to have to take her away.” The nurse uncrosses her legs that were crossed at knee height and immediately crosses them the opposite way. In a clearly nervous gesture. “You've been warned.”

“The most dangerous?” Giraut asks Valentina with a frown, in the exact moment that the door to the floor's communal bathroom opens and a second nurse enters, leading a sleepy little girl about seven years old by the hand. “Does this all have to do with the book by Stephen King?” He looks out of the corner of his eye at the nurse and the sleepy girl that have just come in. “Is that why you need a copy of the book?”

The girl with the sleepy face walks holding on to the second nurse's hand and seems to have some kind of psychomotor problem that gets in the way of her walking in a straight line. As she passes by Giraut's side she stares at him with glassy eyes. The nurse patiently guides her toward one of the toilet stalls. Giraut thinks he can see a bit of saliva on her chin.

“I'm talking about the Captors, of course.” Valentina grabs Giraut's arm. She stares at him with slightly squinted eyes. Like the eyes of someone who has a bit of a headache or who spends too much time looking at a computer screen. “It's them that did all this. I can't say that they're the ones who put me here. There are a lot of things I can't say. The cameras and the microphones aren't the only problem. They have a lot of ways to find out what we are saying here. Right now they're hiding. They fly over the city, but they're invisible. They're waiting for everything to be under control. Then they'll show themselves.” She looks at the nurse chaperone with something like malice. “At first they look like angels. Or that's what they say.”

The nurse clears her throat once again. She looks ill at ease.

“Sir,” she says.

“I'm not hearing voices!” Valentina raises her voice. “Who's hearing voices?”

The second nurse is gently pushing the sleepy-faced girl into the stall. The girl stopped walking when she got to the stall and is now grabbing the door frame with both hands. Letting out a soft noise similar to the mooing of a calf.