Cars were parked along the road, pulled up onto the neighbor’s graveled yard, or partly blocking the flagstone drive, but out of respect no one had parked directly in front of the narrow garage. The oil stain left by To?ino’s car was still there; it cried out for attention like the blood left by Cain’s murder of Abel. It gleamed with stark, grim rainbows in the wash of falling rain.
The gentle orballo during their previous visit was now a heavy rainfall, but the front door stood wide open. There was no awning to shelter it. They entered without knocking. About twenty people, mostly women, were in the kitchen and dining room. The prized dining-room table was covered with a cloth today, and for the first time the massive formal piece of furniture seemed appropriate in the crowded room. On it was an abundant spread of baked goods, meat fritters, and a couple of homemade cakes. Coffee cups from the elegant set of porcelain had been taken out of the sideboard for the occasion; several of the visitors had them in hand. Now several oil lamps stood before the image of the saint on the highly polished heavy wooden chest. Impassive within her shelter, the saint contemplated the mourning mortals.
Rosa María wore deep mourning. She sat surrounded by other women, some as old as she, all gaunt and severe. Declining the assistance offered as soon as she made a move to rise, To?ino’s aunt got up, gave them a slight nod, left the group, and motioned to them. She went toward the rear of the house.
The bedroom was minuscule. The double bed, covered by a deep-purple comforter, was positioned against one wall, leaving just enough space for a dark little night table.
The old woman gestured to invite them to sit on the bed. She closed the door. Hanging behind it were various garments on clothes hangers; with the door shut their appearance was distressingly similar to that of a hanging human figure.
She stared at the hanging garments. “I’m getting help now from social services. A young woman comes to apply my eye drops, but she doesn’t know where the clothes go. She just hangs things up here. They say soon they’ll have someone who can stay longer.” She turned to Nogueira. “Thank you for contacting them.”
Nogueira made a little deprecating motion.
She pointed to the bed again, but they all remained standing, ill at ease and highly conscious of the awkward situation.
“I saw you go next door and figured she’d be telling you some story. That woman is always spying on the neighbors. Of course the poor thing has been all alone since her husband died, and that’s going on eight years now. She seems to have been going downhill ever since.” This thought appeared to worry her. She raised a trembling hand and covered her mouth.
She’d been weeping. Her features had the washed-out appearance deep grief leaves upon the skin. Her eyes, though red, looked healthier than they had during the previous visit. She dabbed at them constantly, wiping away secretions. Her cataract seemed not quite as milky.
“Yes, To?ino did come back that weekend. It was horrible, when my brother turned up that afternoon and said all those things. We do love one another, but we’re always quarreling because of the child. He could never understand why I was so determined to protect him. But To?ino was tiny when his father died and his mother ran off. I tried to give him everything and took care of him the best I could. God knows I love him, and he loved me. My To?ino was a good boy.” The woman fell silent and gave them a look of great dignity, as if daring them to contradict her.
Nogueira assented. “Of course he was, se?ora!”
She nodded in weary gratitude. “I was upset and worried, waiting for him to come back and explain. My brother was always going on about the boy, but I’d never seen him as upset as he was that day. I was afraid for To?ino. It was almost one in the morning when I heard his car. I stood there waiting for him. I’d been in such a fret I was too distracted to fix dinner. I was going to tell him he was putting me in a terrible fix, and I wanted to know if what his uncle said was true. I never got a word out. He was beside himself. Maybe he wasn’t my son, but I knew him better than anyone. I could always tell how he was feeling, just from the way he came into the house, and that night he was going to pieces. I had no chance to ask him, because he threw himself right into my arms, the way he used to do when he was little, and he said, ‘Auntie, I made a mistake, I really screwed up.’ I was dying inside.”
The woman stopped speaking, and for a while she seemed to be studying something at Nogueira’s feet. The men waited silently, hearing the growing murmurs of Rosa María’s neighbors around the dining table through the thin panel of the door. She stood motionless. If she’d wept or at least covered her face, they’d have been less disturbed by her grief, but her listlessness and mute surrender were excruciating. Manuel gave Nogueira a questioning glance. The policeman’s gesture in reply counseled patience.
The woman sighed. She looked around as if suddenly awakening. She was exhausted. Nogueira took her arm just as he had before and guided her the two steps to the bed. When she sat, Manuel heard the rustle of the corn husks in the old-fashioned mattress.
“‘Auntie,’ he told me, ‘There’s a man, a friend of mine . . . I found something at the seminary and I thought he’d be willing to buy it. He has lots of money, Auntie, so really he could have. I thought it would be okay. He was going to give me the money tonight, lots of it, but things got complicated. There’s another man, a tough one, who said no. He’s smart and he knew all about it. The same guy who went to the seminary and warned Uncle, and Uncle gave him my phone number. I thought everything was okay when Uncle left, but then that man called me. He was really angry, not afraid of anything or anybody. He threatened me, and I was surprised and scared. He hung up. But I was a fool, I see now, because I called him back. I thought we could still make a deal. I tried to convince him all he had to do was pay, and that would be the end of it. Auntie, I couldn’t believe it. He said if that’s what I wanted, he’d tell everything, and Uncle and I would go to jail, and you’d die of shame. It was like he knew us, like he knew everything about me. I didn’t know what to say, Auntie. I just shut off my phone.’
“I threw up my hands and held my head, and he kept crying.
“‘I swear I didn’t think things would get this complicated,’ To?ino told me. ‘I thought it’d be like before. I wanted enough money to get you out of this shitty house, so the two of us could have a better life, the life you deserve and couldn’t have because of me. And now everything’s gone wrong. I swear, Auntie, I was never going to tell anyone, all I wanted was some money. My friend’s a good man, I never wanted to hurt him.’”
Rosa María seemed to deflate in one long miserable exhalation. She looked up at them. “And what could I say? I stayed with him and tried to calm him down. I didn’t know what to do. He said after talking to that man he couldn’t decide what to do or where to go. He was too scared to go to that meeting. He’d been driving around like a lost soul, scared as a little child, trying to find the courage to come tell me about it.” She subsided into silence, overwhelmed by fatigue.
“Why did he go out again? He’d already decided not to go to the meeting.”
“A man called his cell phone. I know it was a man because I could hear a deep voice while they were talking. I don’t know what the man said, but my To?ino cheered up a lot when he got that call.
“I heard him say, ‘At home . . . I want to see you too . . . Okay.’ And that was all. I saw the blood come back into his face. He said he was going out, and I tried to convince him to stay home because I had a bad feeling about it. He didn’t listen. He changed his clothes, put on nice ones, and before he left he said, ‘Auntie, maybe things will be okay.’ The last time I saw him, he was smiling.”
PROSCENIUM