Nogueira again covered his face with his hands, anguished and ashamed. Again he broke into sobs.
Manuel’s feelings surged in confusion as Nogueira dissolved in tears. Manuel tried to think of something to say, but whenever he opened his mouth the man’s horrible confession took his breath away and overpowered rational thought. If only he’d been able to utter the words the elderly monk had whispered over Verdaguer’s grave, recusing himself from judging another human being and leaving that heavy responsibility to God instead. But he couldn’t. He was appalled by the bestiality of it, the brutality of the act. And at the same time he was moved by the abject misery of the broken man beside him. A suffering sinner had opened himself, and the profound sense of a shared humanity both provoked rejection and made him feel complicit in evil, as if Manuel too shared the responsibility for all the horrors, humiliations, and affronts committed against all women everywhere from the beginning of time. And he saw the truth of it. Every man on earth, by the simple fact of his masculinity, is guilty of causing all that suffering.
He reached out, placed his hand on Nogueira’s shoulder, and felt the man’s body shudder violently. In answer, the policeman instinctively resorted to the gesture that Manuel had seen days before when Sarita attempted to console Herminia: he placed his hand over Manuel’s, held it, and pressed it against his shoulder.
After crying for a long time, at last Nogueira was exhausted and as limp as a marionette whose strings had been cut. He lit another cigarette and smoked in silence, blowing the smoke sharply upward and out from the car. His gestures were slow and weary as if conserving his last reserves of energy. He gazed through the windshield toward the house, but his eyes were looking beyond their home, his wife, and his sleeping daughters. The misery in his face was proof he was envisioning his dismal future.
“I was drunk,” he said suddenly. “Not terribly drunk, and I’m not claiming that excuses anything. The little one was about two years old. Laura devoted all her time to the baby, the way we’d done with the first one. I was earning enough money so we could afford for Laura not to work. When Antía was a year and a half old, Laura went back to her job. And then everything began to fall apart. It was my fault,” he quickly added. “I’d always left the housework and childcare to her. That’s how I was brought up. My mother always chased us out of the kitchen. Me and my brothers too. I know it’s a shitty excuse, and I should have taught myself what my mother never did. It was okay when there was just Xulia, but with the two of them things got more complicated. Antía was teething and cried all night long. Laura got home exhausted from work, and then she had to take care of all the housework and both of the little ones. She was starting to neglect me. On the weekends all she wanted was to stay home. She cooked and did the laundry, and when she came to bed she wanted to be left alone. She didn’t want to go out, she was always tired, and the few times we did do something we had to take the girls along.”
Manuel listened in silence. He tried to hide his emotions, but Nogueira saw them in his face.
“I know you’re thinking I was a shit-faced macho and I didn’t deserve her. And you’re right.
“One night I went out with some buddies to celebrate . . . something, I forget what, it doesn’t matter. I got back to the house really late, and I’d had a lot to drink. Laura was back from the late shift at the hospital, and she’d been up with the little one. Antía had finally gone to sleep. She walked past me and tucked Antía into the baby bed. She didn’t say anything, but it was obvious she was angry; she was like that almost all the time. I don’t remember how I got to bed, but when she came back I jumped her.” He fell silent.
Manuel knew the policeman was going to weep. This time his crying was slow and mournful. The tears streaked his face. The angry pawing and vehement rejection had vanished.
“I missed my wife. I just wanted to touch her. I swear to you, Manuel, I just wanted to hold her close. I don’t know what happened, but a minute later she was screaming and crying, terrified because I was hurting her and pinning her wrists against the pillow. She bit me.” He fingered his upper lip. “I’ll have to wear this mustache for the rest of my life to hide the scar. That sudden pain woke me, like I’d been having a nightmare. I didn’t completely . . . but I’d hurt her. I pulled back from her in surprise, not knowing exactly what’d happened, and I looked at her, and then I saw her panic and fright. She was terrified. Afraid of me, the man who’d sworn to love her and care for her! And I saw something else, Manuel.” He turned to face Manuel fully. “I saw contempt and emptiness, and I knew at that moment I’d lost her forever.”
“What did she say?”
Nogueira met his eyes. “Nothing. I crawled out of her bedroom that night, Manuel. I took some medicine and vomited my guts out, and I didn’t even try to go back to our bed. I slept on the sofa. I was sure she’d never say a word to me again. She never stopped speaking to me. But whenever she does, her voice is so cold and hateful it’s a constant reminder. That’s why we’re like this now.”
“But did you discuss this with her?”
Nogueira shook his head.
“Are you telling me that in all the years since then, you never once spoke about what happened that night? That you’ve been sleeping in your daughter’s room ever since?”
Nogueira didn’t reply. He pressed his lips together and exhaled sharply through his nose in an effort to contain his despair.
“You’ve never asked her to forgive you?”
“No!” he shouted. “I can’t, Manuel, I can’t; when I look at my wife, I see my mother. I see her again with her dress torn to shreds, hitched up to her waist, her thighs covered with blood. I see her face and the way that bastard devastated her, robbed her forever. I can’t ask for forgiveness, because what I did was unforgivable. I haven’t forgiven that bastard, and she has every right not to forgive me.”
NAUSEA
Tangled in shame and suspicion, Manuel couldn’t sleep. His turbulent emotions nauseated him and refused to be quieted. Those thick black lines censoring the infirmary report, Brother Verdaguer’s rosy cheeks, Nogueira’s mother crouching in the bathtub with her torn dress up around her waist as she tried to wash away the horror, Minnie Mouse sheets in a child’s bedroom. His body punished him with agonizing stomach cramps for his reluctant identification with Nogueira. Perhaps because he suspected that the lieutenant’s suffering was equally psychosomatic. The lieutenant was hounded by the thought he was the same as the monster who’d raped his mother. Nogueira’s hatred of the Mu?iz de Dávila family mirrored the contempt he felt for himself.
Manuel’s mind was in a whirl. He and Nogueira shared the pain of all men, the knowledge that the dragon we seek to overcome dwells deep within our own hearts. The fact that our quest for justice and restitution is lost in advance. That monster, our worst nightmare, is immortal. It will perish only on the day we sacrifice ourselves to all-consuming flames.
He was sick and tired of being buffeted by the world. He sought the refuge of sleep. He fled back to his palace.
OF EVERYTHING HE REFUSED
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.
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.
THE SIN OF PRIDE