‘It’s an order from the governor, mother. A priority matter. It’s a museum piece for which there’s a special urgency. That’s all I can say.’
Having spoken to Mother Asun, Silvia went for a long walk in the docks. It was midday. She saw the champion of Galicia with the horse Carirí and thought of Leica. This time, she said yes, she’d have her photo taken. Medusa was on the Wooden Jetty, sitting on an oak beam that would be used as a sleeper. She looked like the only inhabitant of a strange, empty city built on stakes behind her. Silvia couldn’t help watching her. Whenever she went that way, the same thing happened. She was bewitched by that woman who only revealed half of her face, as if she were a black-and-white figure. Medusa stood up. The way they walked, they resembled two interlinked people moving as one. One pulling the other. One forward, the other cautious, so that they walked with a mixture of brazenness and shyness. Or rather arrogance and fear.
She came up to her and asked for a cigarette.
‘I haven’t got any,’ replied Silvia. ‘It’s true. I don’t smoke.’
‘I didn’t ask whether you smoked or not,’ said Medusa. ‘What do I care whether you smoke or not? This is a city of chatterboxes. Ask for a cigarette and they start giving you their life story.’
Her hair was smooth, very black, and hung like a jet mane. When she talked, it swayed slightly and the shine created drawings that resembled brocade. Silvia would have paid her to carry on talking like this against the world.
‘Why don’t you give me something?’
She said this when Silvia was already rummaging through her purse.
‘Do you want to see my face? I’ll let you see it all for ten pesetas.’
Silvia paid up. And waited. But Medusa said, ‘If you want to see it, you’ll have to unveil it yourself.’ Silvia held out her arm and stroked the smooth hair with her fingers, but didn’t pull it back to see the hidden face.
‘Go on. I’m not a monster, you know.’
Silvia withdrew her hand, turned around and quickly walked away.
That afternoon, a woman visited her in her rented room, as she and Mother Asun had agreed. A civil servant who carried out her instructions to the letter. She brought the cape with her in a protective covering. It was a garment of great historical value that needed restoring for an important exhibition. She could name her price. And conditions. There wouldn’t be a problem.
Silvia explained that her work was measured by time. When she’d finished, she’d tell them how much it cost.
As she turned to leave, the woman said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot! Greetings from Rocío.’
‘Who’s Rocío?’
‘A colleague. She said she knew you.’
Silvia shrugged her shoulders, ‘Well, say hello then.’
Silvia didn’t want Leica to accompany her home or to visit her. Her rented room, in Gaiteira, was near the old railway station. She tried to avoid having contact with the other tenants or drawing attention. The people there were very silent and those that weren’t old seemed to want to grow old before their time. The house, the solidity of the shadows, the taciturn furniture, the murmuring mattresses, the hysterical indiscretion of the cistern above the only toilet in a tiny, communal bathroom. She was there in passing and did not wish to leave any trace, even of the air that went through her lungs. She wanted to put everything, the air and the light, in a suitcase and take them with her when she left. Poor air, poor light. Her only joy was the sound of the trains as they stopped and pulled off. When she sewed, she tried to work her little Singer in time to the engines. But now she had an urgent task. She devoted all her free time to invisible mending. To that very special undertaking.
There was a ring at the doorbell and her sense of alert told her to go and open the front door but, when she entered the hallway, another tenant, Miss Elisa, had already answered. This woman smelt permanently of spices. Her hands were always stained. Her work, which was endless, was to wrap up pinches of cumin, saffron and paprika in tiny paper envelopes she folded at astonishing speed with her small hands and fat, sausage-like fingers. Silvia’s invisible mending and Miss Elisa’s work wrapping spices took place simultaneously, but belonged to two opposing hemispheres of time.
When she saw Leica in the hallway, politely thanking Miss Elisa for being so kind as to open the front door, Silvia was surprised not to feel bothered. She actually did something she would never have allowed herself to do, especially in that house. She embraced him and let him lift her off the floor. He was radiant.
‘I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. We did it, Silvia! They’re going to use your photo in the advert. In the window of Hexámetro! The first advert for electrical appliances with a local model. And Hercules Lighthouse in the background!’
He moved around the room like a master of ceremonies who opens his arms to turn on the lights. A master of ceremonies who plucks landscapes from the walls. Silvia witnessed her room’s conversion. What had been behind the window came inside. Her room was a railway carriage in the station. She suddenly felt like hearing the sewing machine. A breath of animal and machine filtered through the joins between the floor tiles. The bed didn’t sound embittered as usual. The bed listened to their bodies.
By the time they got up, the station was outside the room, without carriages, and the porter boys, the driver of the hire car, the florist, newsagent and shoeshiner seemed to be frozen. Painted. Only two figures moved up and down the platform. One was wearing a hat, both of them were wearing coats tied with a belt. One was short and fat, the other taller and thinner. They looked to Silvia like a comical, sinister pair. And seemed from time to time to glance over at her window. And perhaps they did.
‘What’s this cape?’ asked Leica. The royal cape suddenly attained the status of a mysterious presence. He said, ‘It looks like a garment with history.’
‘Something the nuns asked me to do,’ she replied. ‘An urgent job for a museum. That’s all I know.’
Silvia explained how the task was almost impossible. She could only use the garment’s own threads. An extremely delicate operation. Rather than finding them, she would have to invent them one by one in order to reconstruct the warp.
‘I’ll be at it day and night.’
‘Now that you’re a publicity star? In this country, history always spoils everything.’
They again fell into an embrace. Something to do with their bodies. It’s not easy to let go of the melancholy of bodies.
He had something to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He hadn’t even been able to tell Curtis, whom he trusted so much he’d lent him the horse Carirí so that he could earn a living. Curtis or the cellist. Deep down, he thought no one’s going to realise. I’ll just take Franco’s photograph and that’s it. What about the signature? ‘Sebastián Vidal’ won’t pass unnoticed. He’d better put ‘Sebastián V’. Or ‘V. Photos’ and leave it at that. That should do it. ‘V. Photos’. People will identify Ángel Jalón with portrait photos and Sotomayor with paintings. Who’s going to remember ‘V. Photos’?
He was taken aback when she asked him, ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me, Leica?’ But, as always, he was quick to recover himself. He exaggerated his voice and gesture in what he called ‘a Mastroianni moment’.
‘Anything else? Isn’t that enough? Our triumphal entrance into the future. We’re inside the future, Silvia, inside the shop window.’
She can’t actually know anything, he thought. It’s a secret. Nobody, except for my brother-in-law, Judge Samos, and the governor, nobody else knows. Rocío? No. Rocío doesn’t know Silvia exists. Nobody could have told her about Franco’s portrait.