“Are they going to do an autopsy?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“May I see him?” Manuel entreated the officer.
“Of course,” the police officer replied. “I will escort you.”
Placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a slight push, the captain guided him, passing through the group of the four men and going through the swinging doors.
The hotel room was white. Half a dozen pillows were artfully arranged upon the bed. All the lights in the room—track lights, overheads, and accent lights—were illuminated, casting such dazzling brilliance on the bed that they created a sensation bordering on unreality. It was a painful extension of the arctic sunlight that had taken possession of their home that morning and had stayed with him, virtually blinding him on the three-hundred-mile drive to Lugo. The overcast sky here had provided his eyes some relief, alleviating somewhat the impression so typical of a migraine of viewing the world through a hundred-faceted prism, where every image was blurred and distorted.
He turned off almost all the lights, took off his shoes, inspected the meager supplies in the minibar, and called room service to ask for a bottle of whiskey. He was well aware of the employee’s disdain when he turned down the offer of something to eat to accompany the bottle. Nor did he fail to note the expression of the uniformed waiter who delivered it and looked over his shoulder to check the condition of the room. The man had the expert eye of someone who recognizes a guest who’s going to be a problem.
The administrator had insisted on accompanying him from the hospital to the hotel. During the drive Gri?án tried without success to fill in all the blanks. Words washed over Manuel but merely confirmed the existence of gaps, of quantities of information he needed to know and álvaro hadn’t told him. Gri?án dogged Manuel’s steps as far as the reception desk where Doval, who’d already set everything up, was waiting. They accompanied him to the elevator doors. Gri?án suddenly seemed to realize Manuel must be exhausted and yearning for solitude. He and Doval excused themselves.
Now, alone in his room, Manuel served himself a double shot of the amber liquid and shuffled his way to the bed. He didn’t bother to pull back the covers. He heaped the pillows against the headboard, leaned back on them, and downed the contents of the glass in two swallows like medicine. He got up, went back to the desk, and poured another drink. He started to return to the bed but had a better idea: he took the bottle back with him. He closed his eyes and cursed. Even with his eyes shut he kept seeing that midnight sun, its dazzling image burned into his retinas, as brilliant and formless as some repugnant ectoplasm.
He hesitated, faced with the choice between the need to think and the desire to obliterate all thought. He opted for the latter. He filled the glass and drained it so quickly that his stomach heaved. He almost threw up. He closed his eyes and found to his relief that the overwhelming solar brilliance was starting to fade. But in compensation the echo of all the conversations of that day returned to play out in his mind, blending with memories of things that had actually happened. Other images offered themselves, and dozens of tiny trifling details he’d overlooked or perhaps hadn’t actually overlooked at all now began to make sense. The fact that three years had gone by since álvaro’s father had died, with the death of álvaro’s younger brother shortly afterward . . .
There was that September three years ago when Manuel had become convinced he’d lost álvaro forever. He could recall every minute and every detail: the change in álvaro’s face that betrayed the unacknowledged fact that some weight as heavy as the world had fallen upon him; his disconcerting composure when he announced he had to go away for a few days; and his reticence as he calmly folded garments and placed them in his suitcase.
“Where are you going?”
The silence that met each question, the grieving expression, and the faraway look of someone who was no longer the man with whom he was sharing his life. Pleas had done no good. Demands and threats were useless. álvaro was already on his way out when he turned to say, “Manuel, I’ve never asked for anything, but now I need you to trust me. Will you?”
Manuel had nodded, knowing he was too quick to give in, aware his answer wasn’t an unqualified yes and it wasn’t completely sincere. But what choice did he have? The man he loved was leaving, slipping through his fingers like sand. He felt no certainty in that moment other than that álvaro was determined to go. Since he was going to leave in any case, agreeing to a pact was the only hope of binding him, the only chance that the linked obligations of freedom and mutual trust would hold them together.
álvaro left home with a small suitcase, leaving Manuel plunged in a violent tempest of emotions, plagued above all by the fear álvaro would never return. Then came the unhealthy brooding. He wondered what he might have done recently; searched for the tense instant in which the equilibrium had been disturbed; felt the weight of the eight years of difference in their ages; blamed his exaggerated attachment to books and a secluded life that perhaps were just too much for someone younger, better-looking, more . . . and he cursed the fecklessness that had kept him from realizing that his world was crumbling. álvaro was gone for five days with only the occasional hurried nighttime telephone call, his vague explanations relying on the pledge of trust he’d forced out of Manuel at the last moment.
Uncertainty gave way to frustration and pain. They alternated relentlessly and dragged him into that state of emotional vulnerability he’d thought he’d never have to endure again after his sister died. On the fourth night he lingered, inconsolable, by the phone, unable to step away, conquered by desperation, reduced to the point at which you give up and bare your throat to the executioner.
He clearly heard the pleading in his voice after he answered the phone. “You said just a couple of days . . . now it’s been four.”
álvaro sighed. “Something has happened, something I wasn’t expecting, and things have gotten more complicated.”
He summoned his courage and asked in a whisper, “álvaro, are you coming back? Tell me the truth.”
“Of course I am.”
“Are you sure?”
On the other end of the line álvaro took a deep breath and let it out in a long, slow exhalation, a sound of infinite fatigue. Or perhaps of irritation? Annoyance at being forced to confront and resolve something bothersome and inappropriate?
“I’ll be back, because that’s where I belong and it’s what I want. I love you, Manuel, and I want to be with you. I want to go home more than anything in the world, and what’s going on right now has nothing to do with us.”
There was such desperation in his voice that Manuel believed him.
THE DROUGHT