Manuel stood there in silence, at a loss for words. He had the pressing sensation of having stepped through a mirror into some disconcerting parallel world where logic no longer prevailed. He knows you killed him. But who knew? Killed? Killed whom?
He put his icy hands to his brow and felt it burning again with the interior fever that had been devouring him. Mei was looking down, but his gesture hadn’t escaped her. He disappointed her the way he’d disappointed everyone who’d expected him to collapse in pain. He knew; and he saw it again in her surprise at his next question. “Mei, did you know that álvaro had that much money?”
She stared at him, plainly stunned.
Manuel realized he needed to clarify. “I’m referring to . . . well, I know that the firm had signed important deals with sports clubs, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and . . . well, like that contract with Chevrolet and the other automobile firm, the one from Japan. What was it again? Takensi?”
“Takeshi.”
“Right, that’s the one. But his executor told me álvaro was very wealthy and said it was his own money.”
Mei shrugged. “Yes, I guess you could say he was very rich.”
“Well, I knew things were going well for us, but I never imagined . . .”
“After all, Manuel, you were busy with other things. Your travels, your books.”
With other things. Was there a reproach hidden in Mei’s response? How could he have lived in such ignorance? With his back turned to everything? So all those who knew him must have interpreted his ignorance of the circumstances of his own life as due to a fundamental flaw in his character? Were his travels and books excuses enough to have remained oblivious of all that?
He tried to entertain those questions, but his mind was mired in a sort of defensive torpor that inhibited him from accepting the tale of excess and violence Mei had just told.
“Manuel, I really should leave now.”
He looked up and saw she had put on her coat and was looking for something in her purse. She held out a medium-sized personal agenda with a black cover. He looked it over quickly and left it on the coffee table, so he wouldn’t have to see álvaro’s handwriting.
“I already went through it,” she said, jutting her chin toward the agenda. “It’s the same as the one on the cell phone. But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can check it yourself.”
There was no resentment in her voice. Her humble acceptance of guilt both broke his heart and irritated him beyond words. She kept her eyes fastened on the purse she was helplessly turning over in her hands, now without a purpose. When she noticed him watching, she slowly turned toward the window, stopping a tear with a fingertip almost as if she wanted to push it back beneath her eyelid. Manuel realized that he didn’t even know where she was staying or how she’d gotten to Galicia.
“What hotel are you staying in?”
“I’m not staying. I’m going back to Madrid.”
Manuel checked the time on his cell phone.
“But it’s late. Even if you leave right now, you won’t get there until two in the morning.”
“After we talked I felt really terrible. I thought about calling you back to tell you all this, but I realized I needed to come tell you in person, because you loved álvaro. And I love you, Manuel. I can’t stand the idea that you think I betrayed you.”
He returned her gaze, profoundly moved, but he remained seated on the edge of the bed, watching her rummaging in her purse again as a pretext to stay. He told himself to get up and embrace her again, but he didn’t do so. He wasn’t yet entirely ready to forgive her. “I didn’t say you betrayed me. And I’m grateful you came all this way to tell me this.”
Reluctantly accepting the evidence that if she were ever to receive absolution from Manuel it wouldn’t happen today, Mei slowly secured the clasp of her bag and placed the strap over her shoulder. “Then I’ll be on my way.”
Manuel felt her pain. “Why don’t you stay tonight? You can take your time on the drive back tomorrow.”
“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming, not even my husband. It was . . . an impulse. As soon as I put down the phone, I knew I had to come see you.”
Mei went toward the door. Only then did Manuel get up to follow her. He caught her as she put her hand to the doorknob.
“Mei, right now I’m in no shape to think clearly. But don’t think I’m not grateful. We’re sure to talk again, maybe a little later, but right now . . . I can’t.”
She went up on tiptoes and he leaned over to kiss her. He gave her a brief farewell hug and closed the door after she’d gone.
THE SUN OF TEBAS
álvaro was reading on the sofa, barefoot, with his trouser legs rolled up. He was a speedy reader. He’d started early that morning, and by noon nearly half the pages of the four-hundred-page manuscript of the novel were stacked beside him.
Manuel was in the kitchen. álvaro usually took care of their meals, but they switched duties on the days when he served as Manuel’s reader. Today Manuel’s duty was to make sure everything around his husband was in perfect order, so álvaro’s reading wasn’t interrupted.
Manuel went back to the living room. For a few minutes he pretended to be consulting a weighty book on Italian cuisine. In fact he was watching álvaro from the corner of his eye, monitoring his husband’s facial expressions and the intense focus with which he devoured page after page. Manuel was hoping for a hint of the emotions álvaro was experiencing.
“You’re distracting me,” álvaro muttered. He didn’t look up from the typed pages.
Taking that as an invitation rather than a rejection, Manuel put down the heavy volume that he’d been using as a pretext and went to álvaro. He perched on the armrest of the big chair.
“Tell me how it’s going.”
álvaro declined to be lured. “I will. But you have to let me read it to the end.”
“You already know the end hasn’t been written. I’ll finish it after you’ve read everything here, just like always.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. I’m not going to say anything until I’ve read every single page. So clear out and let me read.”
Manuel was preparing gnocchi, principally because the recipe was tedious and complicated. Peeling and dicing the potatoes, boiling them, putting them through the food mill, preparing the dough, the strips of meat, the small molded balls of dough, the sauce. The recipe was simple, but the steps were complicated enough to keep him busy for hours. Even so, he eventually ran out of things to do. He stepped onto the terrace to look for cats on the rooftops of Madrid, sorted his sweaters, glanced without interest through the newspapers, even started an abortive attempt to read one of the many books in the pile he’d postponed reading until he finished his novel. Meanwhile he kept taking furtive looks into the living room where álvaro sat reading.
Manuel loved seeing him like that. Shirtless and relaxed while the sunlight of that long day shifted its way across his back, endowing his short mane of chestnut-brown hair with a luster and illuminating the calm concentration in his face. álvaro turned page after page, placing each one face down at his side in a stack that by now was taller than the one yet to be read. The last of the August daylight was fading away when he put the final page on the stack.
Manuel placed a bottle and two wineglasses on the table. He carefully filled them and handed one to álvaro. “And so . . . ?”
álvaro stretched out his right hand and placed it over the pages he’d just read. “It’s very good, Manuel.”
“Really?”
“Your readers will love it.”
Manuel put down his glass and leaned forward. “And you? Did you love it?”
“It’s very good.”
“That’s not what I asked. Did you love it?”
Manuel caught álvaro’s gesture of pushing away the finished pages, similar to that of a croupier at a roulette table. álvaro leaned forward to meet his gaze. “If you’re asking if it’s like The Man Who Refused, then no, it’s not that good.”
“You just said it was good.”
“Yes, and that your readers will love it.”
“But why don’t you?”