Authors: Carmen Posadas
From the outset, the most startling aspect of this hotel is that nobody exchanges a word of conversation. I suppose using all that mud has a way of encouraging introspection, because each and every one of the guests here seems to be preoccupied by extremely transcendental concerns requiring a strict vow of silence. During my first few days at L’Hirondelle d’Or, moreover, there were very few of us, which made the silence seem even more bizarre. The only people here were me, the widow, and the Beaulieus—a highly boring Belgian couple not worth describing.
The girl, on the other hand, was extremely interesting. We happened to coincide down by the pool, and if I was staring at her a bit, it was most definitely not because of the story my niece had told me a few days earlier over lunch in London. No, it was something indescribable that—laugh if you must—suddenly made me think:
A widow is the very best thing a woman can be.
My poor mother always said this, and for some reason it suddenly struck me that this awfully thin young girl (“girl,” so to speak—
naturellement;
I would wager she’s past forty) two lounge chairs away from me looked a bit like my mother. Physically, they were completely different—Mama was much more striking; there’s no comparison—but this girl did have an air about her. The same blond hair, the same subtle highlights, and the kind of wide, angular jaw that tends to age so much better than the narrow kind. The eyes were different, of course. Mama’s eyes were a divine, highly unusual shade of blue, whereas this woman’s eyes were gray—but hers had their own appeal, too, don’t get me wrong. I have never liked women with ordinary eyes. I also noticed that this woman had very long fingers, the second thing that caught my attention. That, and the fact that she wore two wedding bands, one on top of the other, as widows often do. She also wore—and I couldn’t help but be slightly shocked—a thick bracelet, very 1940s, though I can’t be sure, for I am hopelessly nearsighted. An interesting piece of jewelry, to be sure, but . . . at the pool?
Que c’est drôle,
I said to myself. In any event, news flies as fast as
hirondelles
at this hotel, for there is always some loquacious waiter who is all too willing to be completely indiscreet, sometimes even for free. No, the vow of silence in this beautiful place is not taken very seriously by the sons of Allah. And so, shortly after spotting the lovely lady down by the pool, I had a complete dossier on her: She had reserved a room for—get this!—forty days; she was from Madrid, childless, and had recently been widowed.
Very well,
I thought.
May he rest in peace, whoever he was.
What more could I say?
Now, to be completely honest, I have never had very much money, but I do try to spend what I have with style—on this occasion, at least, this is what I was trying to do. I should also mention that on more than one occasion I have been lucky enough to come into some extra earnings. And though it may be unseemly to say so, I happen to have a great talent for the gaming tables, especially for backgammon, which, coincidentally, is the preferred game of both playboys and novices, and some of them happen to be very rich. Even before arriving, I had a sense that L’Hirondelle d’Or might be the ideal hotel for this sort of activity. Expensive, discreet, silent . . . Although I was there for three whole days before any truly interesting people showed up, people whose bank accounts I might have had the pleasure of lightening up a bit. Who knew? A rich guy might enable me to earn some bonus cash.
“Gomez,
viens ici,
chi-chi. Don’t bother the lady.” My dog was sniffing around her now, and she was very clearly pretending to be distracted by other things, behaving exactly as I suspected she would: Good girls never strike up conversations with strangers. Though what was she writing with such fervent determination? Something relating to her estate, for sure. She looked extremely well-off. Who knew? Perhaps the dead man had been an old rich guy. What had the funeral been like? I wondered. How did they do them in Madrid? What was the mourning process like? Very different, I supposed,
Dieu merci,
from what I lived through way back when.
It was inevitable. That last thought sent me straight down memory lane: Mama in Madrid, dressed in black, Mama sitting silently at the funeral mass for Bertie Molinet (
“Is that what you call your father, Rafael? As if he were some sort of stranger?
” People always ask me that, and, yes, that is what I have always called him. It would be pointless to fake it, for Bertie and I despised each other, no doubt about it.) There she was in my mind’s eye. It was sometime in the early 1960s and we were all as stiff as the ace of
piques
—broke, that is. Mama was very pale, dressed completely in black, with no accessories whatsoever aside from her marvelous eyes, so dignified. Nobody understood her decision to return to her place of birth like a real lady to honor the dead Bertie, as if she hadn’t been forced to live the previous three years in a sad house in the
dix-septième
in Paris. All of this, of course, was long before we moved to London to fulfill our final and very dismal fate.
Had upper-class funerals in Madrid changed over the years? I wondered. Were they really as crazy as they appear in the magazines, where it looks like the importance of the dead person is measured not by the number of Mercedeses and BMWs at the door to the church but rather by the number of paparazzi, scavengers positioned at the door to the church, photographers
partout,
turning their backs to the sacraments so that they can hover by the pulpit to capture the painful expressions on the faces of the mourners? Was that what the scene had been like at the funeral of this woman’s husband? And, no, that was not the moment the little lightbulb went off in my head, sparking my interest in the young widow. After all, what did I care about that woman? For the moment, at least, she did not seem to be all that intriguing a character, although I
was
certainly intrigued by the very ostentatious bracelet on her left wrist. And she
did
remind me so very much of Mama.
In any case, that was how everything began, out of sheer boredom. The afternoon of October thirteenth went by with no contact at all among the guests beyond the officious nods that we exchanged each time we ran into one another in the corridors: “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” etcetera.
Good Lord,
I remember thinking.
If only there was someone I could chat with, about nothing at all—just some simple company.
Maybe the rest of the guests were happily engrossed in their therapeutic mud treatments, but I was really running out of things to do. Any more of this and I was going to end up talking to myself, like a character out of some sad Chekhov story or exchanging witty repartee with my dog. Of course, I do adore animals—they have so much more common sense than human beings. But this isn’t the time to discuss animals. I don’t want to stray too far from the topic at hand. Anyway, as I was saying, more guests began to arrive. The first ones to show up were a group of Germans, but they were too young for me. Trying to snow-job twenty-year-olds is a bit of a drag; it makes one feel like such a
clochard.
This particular bunch was from very southern Bavaria, I believe, and magnificent-looking—the men, that is.
Que les femmes sont laides!
Not even the most miraculous muds of these hot springs could do much to save them. The men, on the other hand, with their frayed jeans, Calvin Klein T-shirts, and round tortoiseshell glasses, seemed both incredibly distinguished and also so, so . . . oh, how to describe them? So very
Thurn und Taxis.
That was it.
Unfleeceable, mon cher,
I said to myself. I knew it right away. Skimming money off these fresh-faced brats would be harder than drawing gold out of the rocks in this desert. A quick process of elimination led me to think I could perhaps try my luck with the widow,
alors.
It couldn’t be too hard to earn myself a little spending money off her, I said to myself.
And that is precisely what I set out to do. There was no artistry or skill about my decision. Had there been other, more approachable people around, I surely would never have gotten myself mixed up in the affairs and unspeakable secrets of the little Spanish widow. But that is how things always happen, in the most banal way imaginable. The facts were: She reminded me of Mama; my niece in Madrid had a penchant for high-society gossip (she had demonstrated as much a few days earlier); and I had a restless, horribly frivolous finger that was completely unconcerned about the high price of international phone calls from hotel rooms. And, quite frankly, there weren’t many other things to do in that heavenly African oasis. Heavenly, silent, and perfect. Like an Egyptian tomb.
At L’Hirondelle d’Or, you see, indulgence is the name of the game: exquisitely appointed tables piled high with delicacies, exotic fruits, and all those beautiful flowers that some invisible hand replaces constantly so that they are always new, always fresh. And we, the guests, were here together, but we kept to ourselves. Bored but smiling, we moved about the place like shadows. Here, everything is always all right, even when nothing at all is all right. It’s true: The worst things often happen precisely when it seems that everything is totally copacetic. Mama, for example. And once again I recall the day of Bertie Molinet’s funeral. Apparently, nothing at all was unusual, for those are the benefits of good breeding: Everything is always all right. During the funeral service, there were neither tears nor heartrending scenes, but that was to be expected: Good breeding means not revealing your pain. Falling to pieces and breaking down in sobs like a Sicilian mourner has always been thought of as extremely low-class, although . . . although now that I think back, there was a little drama at my father’s funeral. But there was an explanation for that, as strange as it may sound. And that is because among this type of people, outward demonstrations of grief are often inversely proportional to the fondness they feel (or felt) for the dead person in question. Now, nobody felt terrifically fond of my father. And when nobody feels anything, when the people who
should
care about the dead person actually feel nothing, a bit of acting is required, because that is what seems appropriate and right. But what happens is that when people start acting, they inevitably get a little carried away. And that is why, very frequently, the funerals of the most despised people can often be real tear-jerkers. Ah, the paradox of good breeding . . .
Even so, Mama, the lady of the lilac eyes, was never once seen crying, nor was she ever spotted averting anyone’s gaze. Not even when her Spanish relatives approached her one by one, the same ones who gossiped in low voices about her life during those last few years before Providence, merciful lady Providence, made her a widow. “Elisa?” they said, not caring if I heard them. “Elisita? Yes, she always lived abroad somewhere, in Paris or London for many years, and in the early days it was first-class all the way. Oh, did they know how to spend money before the war, those rich South Americans—and that’s exactly what Elisa was married to, you know. A Uruguayan, the kind that live all their lives in France and send their children to Swiss boarding schools until one day they suddenly go bankrupt. And then they become a terrible burden to their wives. They come home again and again after who knows how many extramarital affairs. Oh, but what were you saying? You really don’t know how Bertie Molinet died? Well, let me fill you in a little first about the macho man of the River Plate who just passed away in his home in Montevideo, to everyone’s relief . . .” Those were the things they said after my father died.
It is very possible that all this jumping about is confusing to you, but this is exactly how the story began to unfold in my mind. This was precisely the train of thought that led me to think that perhaps I would tell the little widow on the lounge chair that I was half-Spanish—remarks like that always help to break the ice a bit—half-Spanish, half-Uruguayan; or half-Hungarian and half-French. This type of thing was always very useful for fraternizing. Fortunately, I decided against it and chose instead to observe the prevailing vow of silence, at least until I could ascertain a few basic facts about the woman through Fernanda, who knows everything that goes on in Madrid and is so very up-do-date on these sorts of trivialities. And I definitely did not harbor the least bit of suspicion that the lovely lady lying by the pool had anything to do with the story my niece had told me in London. No, no, I just wanted to know a bit more about her tastes, her habits—one needs a few basic facts, after all, to embark on a proper conversation: “Good afternoon, how are you? There isn’t much to do here, is there? I don’t suppose I could tempt you with a game of backgammon?” That was what I thought of saying to her, and there was no doubt in my mind that this could be the start of a very . . . let’s say
fruitful
relationship.
Now, I am not a writer, nor am I a psychologist, nor am I a playboy in the strict sense of the word, but at that moment I did get the feeling that it would be very much worth my while to keep my eyes and ears open. And I am happy to say that I was not mistaken. Everything I am about to tell you happened as if Providence herself had wished to stage, for my exclusive viewing pleasure, one of those incredible stories that always befall the very best of families—a story complete with dirty laundry, subterfuge, betrayals . . . oh yes, this story had everything. Naturally, I am not going to describe it exactly as it unfolded before my eyes, for then my story would be far too erratic and confusing. Insofar as it is possible, I will try my best to leave out the little details and I will intersperse the various situations, combining more recent ones with older ones, mixing in Fernanda’s information with some of my own conclusions . . . after all, isn’t that what writers do? They are so very devilish. And I can do it just as well as they do. The writer always has the upper hand, after all, because he knows the ending of his story. And I too know how this story ends, which makes it easy for me to make all the pieces fit, every last one, unlike the way things happen in real life. Real life, after all, is nothing but a succession of random stories that never really come to a close until you die. And then, of course, you aren’t around to tell how the stories end, and who really gives a damn about them, anyway? But enough with all this mystery. Let us now go back to our starting point, so that we may begin the story in a logical fashion. As I was saying just before, on the morning of October thirteenth, Mercedes Algorta and I were alone by the pool, and my dog—a very sociable dog, I must say—approached the lady with the most innocent air.