Rage (3 page)

"Hey you," said the doorman.

Jose Maria stopped. Then stared at him. He didn't
look him up and down, but stared him right in the eyes
and asked:

"What's the matter with you?"

"What did I do to you?"

"What d'you mean?"

"This morning you called me an idiot?"

"I apologize. This morning I was chatting here with
a young lady, and you were eyeing us up and down
and... you know how these things are. Do we know each
other?"

"I don't think so."

"That's why I mention it. It's rude to go round staring
at people you don't know like that, plus you pushed me
off the pavement. That's why I called you an idiot."

"I didn't like the look of you."

"Ah well, what do you want me to do about that?"

"At least you could apologize..."

Jose Maria was tired, and hadn't the least desire to get
involved in an argument. So he cracked a small smile
and carried on walking away. The doorman stood in
the middle of the pavement - and, as he watched him
depart, considered calling him back a thousand times
over, even mentally trying out a number of different
tones of voice, but couldn't even manage another "hey
you". Frustrated and furious, he went inside his house.
He slammed the door so hard that his wife dropped the
salt cellar into the saucepan.

"The fucking whore who gave birth to those damn
blacks..." he said as he dialled a phone number. "Hello,
Israel?" Israel could hear him swearing at the other end
of the line. "It's me, Gustavo," continued the doorman.
"Are you busy?"

Israel rolled his eyeballs.

"Get to the point, Gustavo," he said. "I'm in the middle
of eating..."

"I'll call back later then..."

"No, you tell me what's going on..."

Meanwhile, Jose Maria had paused on the corner of
the Alvear and Rodriquez Avenues to gaze at the villa.
The windows were dark, all except the kitchen windows
on the ground floor, and one more on the first floor. The
house was imposing: grey in colour, with patches of lichen,
and missing plaster here and there, like smoke rings, but
you didn't need to be particularly cultured to observe
the splendid aura in which it was enveloped. Without
looking any further, even the flight of white marble
steps dropping down from the front door terminated
in the garden with such plasticity it gave the impression
of a tiered wedding cake. "How beautiful," he thought.
He scratched an armpit and began repeating under his
breath "Rosa... Rosita..." - scarcely moving his lips. It
was a call... He had never done anything like this before.
He had to be falling in love. Yet his heart was beating just
the same as ever, with the same rhythm and intensity. Just
then one of those sudden gusts of wind arose that sweep
up everything one by one: the wind lifted a newspaper
page from the ground in order to deposit it a few yards
further on, it shook the crown of a treetop, caused a piece
of cardboard to vibrate, rise and vanish into the distance.
People began to hurry their steps. Jose Maria raised his
face to the skies: great swathes of dark blue, heavy with
stars, but the storm was out there, held within no more
than a dozen clouds, all on the point of exploding.

2

The next day not a drop fell and the sky shone like a
mirror. Jose Maria was made fun of when he arrived
at work carrying an umbrella. "It's just that I get up at five in the morning and you lot only got out of bed
ten minutes ago," he told the foreman, a strong stocky
man with a moustache worthy of Dali, who took the
lead in sorting people out. At such an hour (seven in
the morning) no one had the least glimmer of a sense
of humour, meaning they tended to indulge in petty
remarks, cheap jokes and vulgar gibes. The foreman
didn't take kindly to Jose Maria's comments, but he let
them go, because one thing was certain: no need to start
a fight when it would be so much easier to throw him out
without further discussion. He contented himself with
grabbing Jose Maria by the arm and pulling him aside
from the rest, just far enough to talk to him without
being overheard.

"Listen here, stupid, I made a joke, so don't take it like
that, 'cause I have a temper too," he warned him.

"Well, well: I'd never have known."

"Known what?"

"Doesn't matter, let it drop. If you've got a temper,
we'll let it go."

"Are you being insolent with me? Don't you realize
that I could throw you out right now if I felt like it?"

Jose Maria nodded his head in silence, without taking
his eyes off the man for an instant. For his part, the
foreman held his gaze without relinquishing his grip.
Worse still: the pressure on Jose Maria's arm grew as the
two stared at each other, chiming with the increasing
imminence of a physical reaction on Jose Maria's side.

The foreman was certain the young lad was ready to
attack him at any moment: he imagined him grabbing
the joist beneath which they stood with both hands then
swinging up to throttle him with his legs. He had seen
him do just that a few weeks earlier, when Jose Maria
was joking about with a mate of his, and he'd been impressed by his agility. Jose Maria spat sideways and
said:

"Let's get back to work, we're wasting daylight..."

The foreman was reluctantly obliged to let him go.

Jose Maria went off to get changed. The weather
remained heavy and this mood was echoed by the
attitude of those who had been closely watching the
scene, and even of all those who had only recently
come on site. As soon as they got to work they knew
something was up. Nobody said anything as they moved
around slowly, staring down at the ground, blinking
less than normal.

`Just see what an umbrella can do," muttered one in
a low voice.

"Nothing to do with the umbrella, everything to do
with the joke," responded another. "You need to know
who you're dealing with. That Maria is just as dangerous
with or without the umbrella."

Everyone called him Maria, just like that. It was
something that occurred naturally, and which Jose
Maria didn't seem to mind about one way or the other.
In actual fact he couldn't have cared less. Even Rosa
began to call him Maria. There was something in his
viscerally taut body, together with the length of his
eyelashes, which almost automatically ruled out the
possibility of his simply being called Jose. You only
needed to see him to realize that his agility was a truly
exceptional gift, and, this being clear, this threat of
danger meant that people called him "Maria" with
caution, as if, despite his willingness to be called by that
name, they were still wary of causing offence.

It made the foreman's blood freeze to have Maria
outstaring him, despite his naturally sanguine nature.
Only now the episode was over and done with did it begin to make his blood boil. Such sudden changes in
temperature had prevented him from being properly
aware of how dangerous Maria was. The same thing as
happened with the doorman. If the two men had paid
a little more attention, they wouldn't have tangled with
him. Maria had done nothing to them; it was they who
had picked on him. No doubt a warning signal following
some kind of natural law becomes activated, prompting
the spider, even before becoming hungry, to trap its
little flies, but there was no proper reason to count Rosa
in among their number.

It had happened without the foreman and the doorman noticing, and it was what so blinded Rosa: she
was a dutiful and even-tempered girl, her head filled
with endless dreams. Maria's dangerous edge, which
Rosa chose to put down to his "character" (as when
she called him "pig-headed" or "stubborn"), made
him her ideal foil, the complementary and hitherto
missing piece in her make-up. She felt charmed to be
in his company. She thought herself protected, and was
under the impression that the two of them together
could conquer the world. It was an image so far outside
reality, she never noticed the time passing when they
were together.

Maria would stop by and see her daily at six thirty in
the evening, at the end of his day's work. They met at
the tradesmen's entrance to the mansion, and between
one kiss and the next they laid their plans - all endowed
with an astounding triviality, but fundamental to their
relationship - things like meeting up the next day at the
Disco supermarket or spending Saturday night together
in the small hotel down on the Bajo.

Rosa and Maria made love every Saturday, and spent
all their Sundays together. They would have made love every day if it were down to them, since Rosa was free
to leave the house whenever she wanted, but to tell the
truth they lacked the money. They both earned the
same amount: 700 pesos a month. Two hours in the
hotel cost twenty-five pesos, which means they spent
a hundred pesos a month simply on making love on
Saturday afternoons, and 200 if they stayed on Sundays
too. They went Dutch (first him then the next time her),
but Rosa's monthly outgoings were far less than Maria's,
given that he had to make the daily journey from home
in the Capilla del Senor, a round trip which came to
another 260 pesos per month. So, on sex and travel he
was paying out 310 pesos each month. Had this been
the sum total, they could have lived comfortably on the
remaining 390 pesos, but Maria was also a human being
who required food and cigarettes and (on those rare
occasions when he tried to be a gentleman as well as
a normal person) liked to pay for an occasional beer
or a coffee on their excursions to the city centre, all of
which left him precious little choice beyond restricting
his lovemaking to Saturday afternoons.

Rosa might have lamented the fact, but it was true that
she didn't live within the same financial constraints as
Maria. Better still, Rosa was in a position to make savings.
Her food was provided, as was a roof over her head, and
she wasn't required to travel anywhere. She didn't even
need to buy clothes - although nor did Maria, if the
truth were told. Buying magazines didn't come into it:
her boss Senor Blinder had a subscription to Selections
from the Reader's Digest, which arrived punctually by post,
and which she opened and read, sometimes even before
he did.

To Maria, earning exactly the same as Rosa was slightly
worrying, since it seemed to him he was obliged to make considerably greater efforts than she ever did. This was
doubtless so in matters requiring physical strength, less
so in terms of the amount of time he dedicated to his
job. In that sense at least, Rosa worked twice as hard as
he. But time was not taken into account by the purely
physical mentality of Maria, who had no money even to
buy a haircut. So it was that he wore his hair extremely
short above the ears and rather longer down the back of
his neck, not because the cut was in fashion but because
it was one he could do himself in front of a mirror.

Alongside the developing relationship with Rosa, his
"attitude" problems made him a long series of enemies in
the neighbourhood, some of them occasional or erratic,
others well-established. For a start, the doorman, now
reinforced by Israel, who was the son of the president of
the Owners' Association. Israel looked like a twenty-sixyear-old rugby fan, bulkily built, with the eyes and mouth
of a frog, and a head buried between his shoulders.
Yet he'd never played rugby, had no idea even of the
basic rules - though he always went out dressed in shirts
belonging to any or every team in the world; he sweated
heavily too, which smelled really badly, so he smothered
himself in extremely expensive perfumes which, when
they combined with his personal odours, generated a
unique and almost intolerable aroma, to such a degree
that most people were compelled to hold their noses.

He always went about dressed in jeans and chamois
moccasins and - it's now perhaps worth mentioning
- he was a Nazi. The doorman had phoned to tell him
about the encounter with Maria because he knew that
Israel loathed foreigners, the more so if they happened
to be poor, and worst of all if they wanted to act sharp
in his neighbourhood. He had said as much to the man
himself on more than one occasion: "Let me get my hands on him and you'll soon see..." It was his favourite
turn of phrase, especially so when he could use it to
close a conversation. Very well, now was his opportunity
to put his words into action. Posted at the building's
entrance and keeping company with the doorman, he
was waiting for Maria to pass by. Israel flexed the joints
in his fingers, then his wrists, ankles and neck, while the
doorman chain-smoked one cigarette after the next.

Maria came by at six thirty on the dot, just like the
previous evening. The doorman saw him coming and
nudged Israel, indicating the man with his chin.

"That's him."

"Back off," Israel muttered under his breath.

The doorman took a step backwards.

Once again, the climate looked ominous. Maria, oblivious to the possibility of getting caught out, came along
whistling a merry and mellifluous melody, pure birdsong; he had the bag containing his work clothes slung
over his shoulder. As he drew level and was about to pass
the two men, one of them - Israel - cut in front of him,
rudely blocking his way.

"Where are you going?" he asked him.

?
"Why?"

"What d'you mean, why? Because I'm asking you, you
Black Jewish motherfucker."

Maria looked at the doorman, engaged in cleaning
his nails with a key, and understood the source of the
problem. Next he acted entirely out of character: taking
the bag off his shoulder, he set off at a lick, heading for
the corner. He ran with such speed and agility that Israel
hadn't yet turned around before Maria had disappeared
from the scene.

"Did you see that?" Israel asked the porter.

"I told you he was swift."