She finished her cigarette and, picking up her suitcase again, she went into the station. At first, as she walked towards the automatic doors, the faces of her two friends, Margarita and Antonia, remained in her mind, motionless, like two picture postcards; then, when she reached the bus-company office and stood in the queue, the image of Margarita came alive and the memory of her last day in prison reasserted itself.
“This is my present, for you to put in your house, in your bedroom,” Margarita was saying to her as she moved about the cell, the scene of that particular memory. She was handing her a small picture, a detail from the fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapeclass="underline" God and Adam reaching out to each other.
“I can’t possibly accept it, I can’t,” she said, pushing it away. She knew how important that picture was to Margarita. On the nights when they would sit philosophizing, for example, when they had managed to get hold of a couple of beers and could allow themselves the luxury of staying up until the small hours talking and drinking, Margarita always ended up discussing that picture. There was one particular detail that had great significance for her — the gap between the two fingers. Despite all the efforts of both God and Adam, their fingers never touched. There was only a tiny space between them, but they didn’t touch. What did that mean? The impossibility of man ever making contact with God? The impossibility of being good? Adam’s independence from God his creator?
“You have to accept it, you must.”
Margarita closed her eyes, adopting one of her favourite poses, that of a medium who has just gone into a trance, a pose that had given her quite a reputation amongst the women in prison; many thought she was mad, but, amongst those who were impressed by the way she spoke and by her evident culture, she had a reputation as a kind of priestess, a seer.
“Well, I’m not going to,” she replied, rearranging the things she had already packed in her suitcase.
“I know how much you like the picture, almost as much as I do. I don’t know why you like it, but you do. And the oddest thing of all is that you’ve never said so, you’ve kept the attraction it holds for you a secret. And that, as an Argentinian psychoanalyst would say, suggests the presence of something very important. Don’t laugh, please. I’m convinced that the picture reminds you of something in your past life, something so important that you’ve never been able to tell anyone about it, not even after a few beers.”
“What’s even odder is that you’ve never found out,” she said, no longer laughing.
“What does that scene remind you of?” Margarita insisted, taking the picture back and examining it closely. “You ought to tell me. You can’t leave without at least giving me that satisfaction.”
“It’s nothing very special. It just reminds me of a boy I grew up with. He was a draughtsman and he was always talking to me about Michelangelo. That’s all I can tell you, there’s nothing more to it.”
“I don’t think you’re telling the truth,” said Margarita, looking her in the eye.
“You’re quite right, but you were so insistent that you forced me to invent something,” she confessed, holding her gaze. She was getting a bit impatient. She wanted to finish packing.
“So I was right; it is something important!” exclaimed Margarita. “I knew it all along. People always hide the really important things.”
Although the rumours circulating in prison spoke of the kidnapping of a child, no one knew exactly why Margarita had been given such a long sentence. That was her secret, the thing that she would never talk about, not even on those rare nights when they all got slightly drunk.
“Anyway, the picture is yours. You’re to pack it in your suitcase.”
“All right, if you insist.”
Margarita placed the picture amongst the clothes and the books.
“What books are you taking with you?”
Before she had time to reply, Antonia, their other cellmate, appeared. She was a young woman of about thirty, though she looked older, the consequence of the life she had led before she was sent to prison.
“You are a mean sod, leaving us just when we were having a good time. You’re heartless, you are,” she said as soon as she came in, underlining her reproach with a little shove.
“And that’s not the worst of it, she’s taking with her the entire contents of number eleven,” Margarita added, rummaging around in the suitcase and taking out one of the books that had just been packed. “Number eleven” was a cell fitted out as a library, a victory for the inmates on their corridor.
“I’ve only taken my favourite books, about ten of them. And they’re nearly all duplicates.”
“So Stendhal is amongst the chosen few,” said Margarita, opening the copy of Scarlet and Black that she had in her hands. “I don’t know if I would choose that. No, I don’t think I would.”
She put the book down and peeked again in the suitcase.
“And what about your English books? Have you got those too?”
“Yes, teacher, I’ve got them too.”
Antonia followed Margarita’s lead and took another of the books out of the suitcase. It was an anthology of poetry.
“Here’s our poem,” said Antonia, turning to a particular page. And she started reading out loud.
Beat at the bars.
Cry out your cry of want.
Let yourself out if you can.
Find the sea, find the moon,
if you can.
“I hate that poem. Stop it,” Margarita said, interrupting her. She snatched the book from her hands and returned it to the suitcase.
There were certain things, like cigarettes, alcohol or barbiturates, that helped to make imprisonment bearable. However, it was reading that had helped her most, or, to be more precise, the little literary group that Margarita, Antonia and she had formed around cell number eleven, an island inside the prison, a place which, as well as functioning as a library, occasionally served as a lecture hall. According to Margarita’s calculations, about ninety per cent of the prisoners had been in that cell at some time, but only about fifteen could be said to be regulars.
“Have you gone to sleep?” she heard someone say. The man at the ticket office was staring at her from the other side of the counter. He was a very spruce young man, with his hair slicked back. He seemed impatient.
She apologized and asked for a ticket to Bilbao. In the smoking section.
“I don’t want to poke my nose in, but, if I was you, I wouldn’t travel in the smoking section,” said the young man, talking very fast.
“Look, just give me the ticket,” she insisted. She had a deep dislike of hysterical people.
“Now calm down, don’t get angry. Let me explain,” the young man said, still gabbling. “The thing is, our buses are double-deckers, and the lower deck, which is reserved for smokers, isn’t even half as big as the top deck. And if there are a lot of passengers,” the young man went on, talking quickly so that she wouldn’t interrupt him, “all the smokers travelling on the top deck come downstairs whenever they feel like a smoke and a real fug builds up. Do you see what I mean?”
“You’ve convinced me,” she said. She didn’t want to prolong the conversation.
“Seat number thirty-two,” said the young man, holding the ticket out to her. “And I’m sorry if I poked my nose in where it wasn’t wanted.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you know why I gave you that advice? Because I’ve often travelled downstairs myself. We employees have to. They make us sit downstairs even if there are free seats on the top deck. I get sick every time I have to make a trip.”