Medardo Fraile - Things Look Different in the Light & Other Stories

“Here we are!”

She went in and, while he was turning the key in the lock, she grasped the grille on the heavy street door, as if waiting for him to finish. The man following behind passed at precisely that moment. He was a dark, stocky young man, who, oblivious to her presence, glanced casually in through the door. She was standing motionless behind the grille, nonchalant, apparently distracted, a glint of boldness and fear in her restless eyes, following the man as he passed, following the wake left behind by his slow, deliberate, swaying walk, by the sound of his sudden rasping cough. She felt the cold iron beneath her hand and saw the closed door. There was Saturday striding off down the street. She realized that her husband was holding the glass-panelled door open for her to pass. And she turned and calmly, silently followed him, one step at a time; for some reason, she slipped a hand, bewildered and perplexed, into her handbag, as if feeling for something, a key, her powder compact, her handkerchief, that missing piece of Saturday.

“TODAY I’M GOING TO WRITE to my brother. Do you want to add a note or something?”

“Yes, why not…”

“Or, indeed, why?” he thought. “After all, Luis is my family, not hers.”

He was still in his dressing gown, unwashed and uncombed, and was wandering, apparently aimlessly, about the bedroom. Then he went downstairs and hovered indecisively in front of the desk there.

He walked back to the foot of the stairs and shouted:

“Geny, have you got the letter?”

“What letter?”

“The last one Luis wrote to me.”

“No, you must have put it somewhere. I’ve no idea where it is.”

He returned to the desk, riffled through a few bits of paper and envelopes, before realizing that he couldn’t really see. He felt in his pockets and went back to the foot of the stairs.

“Geny…”

“What?”

“Throw my glasses down to me, will you? I think I left them on the chair in the bedroom, on top of the newspaper.”

She took quite a while to reappear, and he thought: “God, she’s slow. All she has to do is look where I told her to look. But, then, one of her great pleasures in life is not finding what she’s looking for.”

“Are you there?” asked his wife from the top of the stairs.

“Where do you think I am?”

“Here, catch.”

And she threw him a metal glasses case.

He returned to the desk and rummaged through papers, Christmas cards, leaflets, bills and a few letters.

“Oh, what does it matter?” he thought. “There’s no earthly reason why I should remember what Luis said in his letter. It’s months since he wrote it. I can tell him about us and ask how his grandson is doing. He’ll like that.”

He sat down in the armchair opposite the blank television and heard Geny moving about in the kitchen, possibly having breakfast. He shouted:

“Geny, what’s Luis’s grandson called? Lucas?”

There was the sound of water filling the sink and the clatter of pots and pans. He got up, opened the kitchen door and asked the question again. Geny said:

“Wherever did you get the name ‘Lucas’ from? No one in either of our families is called Lucas. It’s Martín. They called him Martín because he was born on St Martin’s Day, the eleventh of November, and they liked the name, don’t you remember?”

He went back to his armchair and thought: “They never fail. When it comes to births, saints’ days, weddings, divorces and deaths, they’re infallible. But that’s women for you.”

He said to himself: “I could tell Luis that our daughter came and spent a few days with us at Christmas or I could even”—and he smiled at this—“tell him about this morning, when I woke up and saw Geny sitting on the edge of the bed. I suddenly noticed the flowers on her nightdress. I’d never noticed them before. I thought: ‘Why flowers?’ I never will understand this grotesque desire of Geny’s, and of all women, to wear something pretty when all prettiness is fast fading. When you’ve lived with someone for years, there’s no room for lies, there’s no way you can disguise or brighten the passing days with a touch of make-up or a nice floral print. I said to her: ‘Are you getting up, then, you and your flowers?’ I don’t know if she heard me or not. She left the room — limping because of her arthritis — and didn’t say a word.”

“Are you going to have your breakfast now? Are you getting dressed?”

“No, I’m going to write that letter,” he said.

Then, feeling a bit chilly, he decided that he would, after all, get washed and dressed.

When he came downstairs again, carrying the notepaper and an envelope, Geny was just finishing preparing some greens and a bit of meat for lunch and told him not to sit at the kitchen table. He picked up a banana and went into the dining room to write.

“Are you going to eat that now?”

“It’s my breakfast.”

He sat for a moment, looking at the blank sheet, then launched in with: “Dear Luis and Paula”. Then he thought: “I don’t particularly care about Paula, so I could just write ‘Dear Luis’ and mention Paula and the children at the end when I send our love to everyone. Or should I start the other way round? ‘Dear Paula and Luis’, in accordance with that old-fashioned and now defunct rule ‘ladies first’, or because, in marriages, it’s more important to keep in with the wife than with the husband.”

“Shall we have lunch?”

“What, now?”

“It’s not exactly early. It’s gone three o’clock.”

He glanced out of the window and it seemed to him that there was less light. It was one of those grey days that gets rapidly greyer and greyer.

When they were having their dessert of stewed apples, she said:

“Loreto said she’d drop by this evening for you to sign a certificate of good character or unimpeachable conduct or some kind of statement saying that we’ve known them for years…”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. I think Piero wants to start a business importing ceramics from Sicily or from Murano or somewhere, and now, what with drug-trafficking and so on, it’s not that easy…”

He said nothing and thought about his letter.

After lunch, he fell asleep in the armchair and was woken by Loreto ringing the bell. Geny opened the door, and the two women stood for a while in the hall, whispering.

Loreto was a pretty, dark, plump woman and, when she came in, she filled the apartment with her body, as well as with her voice, her stories, her striking, totem-like eyes, and her laughter. She always wore black to disguise her size — without success.

He liked Loreto and, at the same time, her vitality wore him out, and he preferred to have nothing to do with her husband; he just didn’t like him, quite why he didn’t know, but, still, they were good neighbours, and so he signed the form.

The letter was still there on the dining table when she left, and he sat down again, intending to carry on.

“Dear Luis and Paula,” he read.

“The fact is,” he thought, “Luis is the more active of the two of us and could at least phone occasionally, like Geny’s sister-in-law does. With letters you never know if they’ve arrived or not and months or even a year can pass before they’re answered, and, besides, I don’t really know what to say, because that business about Geny’s nightdress would be fine in a diary or your memoirs, but really the only thing you want when you write to someone is to find out if they’re all right and to tell them that you, thank God, are also all right.”

He wrote: “Your letter reached us ages ago, and this morning I said to Geny that today was the day, that I was going to write and tell you that we’re all fine here, with nothing much to report, just the usual aches and pains that come with old age and which, when all’s said and done, are at least a sign that we’re still alive. Let us know how little Martín is, if he’s grown a lot and what tricks he gets up to.”