They slipped under the half-lowered metal shutter. Most of the lights were out, and chairs had been placed upside down on almost all the tables. A middle-aged man behind the bar was watching a boxing match on television. From time to time he refreshed the glasses of a couple of hardened drinkers and a gambling addict who fed coins into a slot machine the whole time Nogueira and Manuel were there.
They stood at the bar for the first two shots, but as they received the third Nogueira pointed toward the table farthest in the back by the door to the toilets. The stink of disinfectant was strong. Manuel was beginning to feel tipsy. The numbing effect of the booze dulled the throbbing pain of his hand. As he’d predicted, it had swollen considerably.
Nogueira appeared progressively more serene with each drink. “I greatly regret what happened earlier,” he said with ceremonial politeness.
Manuel was baffled. “You mean what happened in the street?”
“I do.”
Manuel rejected that. “Well, after all, it wasn’t your fault—”
“It was indeed,” Nogueira interrupted him. “It’s the fault of all of us who think that way. Like those assholes do.”
It dawned on Manuel what the man was trying to say. “Okay, then,” he replied with equal seriousness. “In fact, I guess it was.”
“I’m sorry,” the lieutenant apologized again. “Don’t know why things are that way,” he added with the solemn emphasis of a drunken philosopher, “but the fact is—they just are.”
“You are drunk,” Manuel replied with a grin.
Nogueira frowned, raised one finger and pointed it at him. “I am a bit drunk, but I know what I’m saying. I was wrong about you. And when a man makes a mistake, the very least he can do is admit it.”
Manuel regarded him with an equally solemn gaze and pondered how much truth lay in those words.
“I don’t know why, really; I don’t have any reason to hate queers.”
“Homosexuals,” Manuel corrected him.
“Right, what you said. Homosexuals,” Nogueira conceded. “You’re right about that; see what I’m talking about? It’s a screwed-up way of talking. And truth is, when I see you having a coffee, say, in a bar, you know, that’s ‘normal’”—he gestured to indicate the quotation marks—“it doesn’t cross my mind that you’re gay.”
“And what exactly do you think?”
“I mean that, just looking at you, nobody could tell you were . . .”
“But I am, Nogueira. I’m a homosexual. I have been since I was born, and whether anyone can ‘tell’ or guess just isn’t the issue.”
Nogueira waved grandly to dismiss that thought. “Fuck, it’s so hard to talk to queers! What I mean is, you’re a good guy and I’m sorry.” He again became very solemn. “I apologize to you on my own behalf and on behalf of all the assholes in the world who have no fucking idea who you really are.”
Manuel nodded, smiling at the man’s awkwardness. He raised his glass to mark this conversion from homophobia. “I’ll drink to that!”
Nogueira downed his drink without taking his eyes off Manuel. “Now that we know you’re not a prissy little shit-faced queer, it’s my turn.”
Manuel nodded slowly and waited for it.
“I just want to say that sometimes we judge other people without bothering to get to know them. I’m not one to talk; I’m the first to admit it. But what I want to tell you, Manuel, is that I am not a son of a bitch.”
“Listen, Nogueira—”
“No, no, let me finish. The other day you said I was a heartless bastard, a sadist who liked to see others suffer.”
“That’s just a manner of speaking—”
“And you were right,” Nogueira interrupted him. “I hate the Mu?iz de Dávila family. From the time I get up until the time I go to bed, I curse the air they breathe, and I’ll be cursing them with the last breath I take.”
Manuel looked at him in silence. He gestured to the bartender, who brought the bottle and filled their glasses again.
“Just leave it on the table,” Manuel said.
The man started to protest, but Manuel slipped him a couple of bills from his wallet. The barkeep disappeared.
“My father was in the police too. One night it was raining, and there was an accident at a railroad crossing not far from here. He was one of the first to get to the scene. He was helping remove the victims from the vehicle, and a train traveling in the other direction cut him down. Killed instantly. My mother was a widow. With three sons. I was the oldest of the three kids.”
“I’m sorry,” Manuel muttered.
Nogueira’s nodding head signaled acceptance of his condolences, as if he’d just lost his father. “Things were different back then. What he left and what they paid us wasn’t enough to live on. She was a fine seamstress, so not long afterward she went to work at the manor.”
“Up at As Grileiras?”
“Times were different. Ladies like the marquess were always having new dresses made, for everyday and for celebrations. Soon my mother was receiving commissions from other rich women; and after a while my mother was earning more than my father ever had. One afternoon she went to the manor with some dresses for the marquess to try on. Sometimes we’d go with her and play outside—see, that’s how I know about the garden. I spent lots of afternoons waiting out there with my brothers. But that day we weren’t with her.”
Manuel remembered how startled he’d been by Nogueira’s comment about the garden: Really precious.
“The lady of the house wasn’t at the manor. They were all off somewhere, except for álvaro’s father, middle-aged, arrogant, and as macho as they come.” Nogueira’s lips set in a sneer. “I came home without warning because I’d skinned my knee playing soccer. I went into the bathroom and there she was. In the tub, but with her clothes on. They were twisted and torn, fastened up with a belt, and she was bleeding . . . down there. Her thighs were all bloody and the bathwater was red. I thought she was dying.”
Manuel shut his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands to them, trying to chase away that picture.
“I was ten. She made me swear not to tell. I helped her get to bed, and she stayed there more than a week. All that time I took care of her and my brothers too. They were a lot younger. They had no idea.”
“Good God, Nogueira!” Manuel muttered. “You were so young!”
Nogueira assented with a slow nod. But he gazed into the distance, years away in the past, seeing a very different night.
“One afternoon the marquess’s car stopped at our gate. The driver brought a big basket to the door, with food, cookies, chocolate, ham, all kinds of things we never had. I remember my little brothers laughing like it was Christmas. The marquess went into my mother’s bedroom, closed the door, and talked with her for a long time. She gave each of us a coin when she left. My mother told me she’d still be working for the lady, but she wouldn’t be going back to the manor. From then on the driver picked up and delivered the dresses for fittings. Every once in a while he brought us one of those baskets with towels and sheets and fine bedclothes from the manor. My mother was a very courageous woman, Manuel.”
“She had to be. Very courageous.”
“She brought us up, me and my brothers, and she never complained. She did the only thing she knew how to do, and she never gave in. She never did, Manuel.”
He saw Manuel wasn’t following him.