Ursula hurries along Calle Sarandí, the city accompanying her like a ghost, she crosses the square without looking, turns right and continues like an automaton; she could follow this route blindfolded. She reaches Calle Bacacay, from where you can see the Solís Theatre and part of Plaza Independencia, but she doesn’t look. She turns, arrives at the same time as the bus that will take her to her destination, hails it and gets on. She doesn’t take her car, she doesn’t want to park nearby, doesn’t want to run the risk that somebody 35might recognize it; she’s thought about everything, even the smallest details, Ursula thinks, and nobody will be able to catch her out.
She climbs on board and sits at the back, like always. At this time of day and travelling in this direction, there are hardly any passengers, and the few that there are sit staring at their smartphones like idiots. She covers her face with a scarf, her eyes with sunglasses, her forehead with a woollen hat.
It will be a short journey; there’s not much traffic and she doesn’t have far to go, just fifteen or twenty minutes, then she’ll get off at the junction of Calle 21 de Setiembre and Ellauri, walk a few yards to Vázquez Ledesma, the street that runs alongside the park, and then a couple of blocks south towards the waterfront, but on the side with the buildings. Then she’ll cross over to Villa Biarritz Park, sit on a bench neither too far from nor too close to her target, inhale the fragrance of the vegetation – eucalyptus, carpet grass, oak, maritime pine, monkey puzzle trees, earth, dog shit – and she’ll wait until it’s time, until the main door opens and the woman comes out.
The woman she’s waiting for will come out of her house, an apartment block almost in the “luxury” category, stepping through the door with its polished bronze frame and out onto the waxed marble beyond, before which she will have greeted the uniformed doorman in a tone somewhere between indifference and sarcasm, that slightly overbearing tone that comes from when she still lived in Carrasco, in a house with a swimming pool and a cook and a maid, and a big garden with exotic trees and two gardeners.
The woman she’s waiting for will come out of her house after greeting the doorman, nimbly descend the stairs 36separating the shiny door from the street, dressed in expensive sportswear, her hair pinned up with a designer hair clip; she’ll check the time on her Swiss watch, adjust her headphones and cross the street, jog through the park at a gentle pace that Ursula will follow from a distance and with some difficulty, until she reaches the waterfront, where the jog will become a run that will separate the two women until the next day. Or Ursula will simply sit and wait as she thinks about how the woman promised to pay her the ransom for her kidnapped husband, Santiago, about how this traitor lied to her, about how she deceived her. She trusted the woman’s promises, she imagined a house, a car, a swimming pool, and now all she has is her anger.
And who knows what Ursula feels today as she waits on this park bench from which she has been keeping watch for a month? Who knows what she feels in this repeated simulation of police surveillance, of espionage or detective work? What does she feel? What does she think? Because sometimes her brain doesn’t entirely belong to her and suddenly she realizes something is drilling away at it: her own rage, the unstoppable internal monster that roars at her, constantly reminding her of her betrayal by that other Ursula López, that other woman, her namesake.
37
The image is strong, colourful, bright, as if taken from the cover of a magazine: the wintry morning light refracts as it passes through the stained-glass windows and falls on the man kneeling on the prie-dieu, tinting his grey suit and his gelled hair, colouring his whole person red, blue, violet and yellow. Autumn is nearly over and it’s very cold outside. On the walls to the right and left are representations of the Via Crucis – of the Stations of the Cross, to be more exact – and holy music that might be Bach drifts over the pews and aisles and altars and floats up to heaven from the parish church of Las Esclavas del Sagrado Corazón, on Calle Ellauri.
Antinucci is performing the penance that Father Ismael imposed on him just a few minutes ago: one Lord’s Prayer, one Hail Mary and one Gloria in exchange for God’s forgiveness for taking His name in vain and for having three unclean thoughts about the secretary at his law practice. The shafts of morning sunlight that enter through the stained-glass windows on the east side don’t bother him because his eyes are shut, squeezed tight. He prays conscientiously, lost in his act of contrition and oblivious to his surroundings, feeling neither heat nor cold. When he recites his prayers he forgets about everything and isolates himself from the iniquitous sinful world outside; he keeps his head down, his eyelids closed, and doesn’t even hear the muffled footsteps of tardy believers, the ones who always arrive at the last 38moment, just before Father Ismael steps up to the altar in his chasuble to celebrate Mass.
Not many people attend the seven o’clock service and they acknowledge one another with a slight movement of the head, their lips forming an almost straight line; just the trace of a smile passes between those who enter on tiptoe and those who are already seated.
Antinucci finishes his prayers and crosses himself in an expansive movement that goes from the crown of his head to somewhere down near his navel and from his left shoulder to his right. He looks up and sighs, exhaling the pent-up air, expelling the sins he has now paid for, relieving himself of the final traces of guilt, which he releases with his breath. Then he fills his lungs with fresh holy air, with the smell of incense and purity.
His image, which a few moments ago was multicoloured, is now almost golden as a result of the sun shining through the yellow glass. If one of the faithful were to notice him – unlikely, as each is concerned with their own sins – perhaps they would assume the lawyer is an archangel or a prophet or at least a saint, or that his state of grace is beyond that of a normal human being. That being said, nobody appears to perceive the changing play of the light that now casts a supernatural aura around Antinucci and which, like so many daily miracles, goes entirely unnoticed.
Now free of sin and having completed his penance, paid the price he deserved, Antinucci gets up and takes his seat on the pew. He smiles to himself, undoes a button on his grey suit, pulls his trouser legs up a little and sighs again. He feels good, comforted in his guilt, part of the flock of good Christians; he knows the Lord is his shepherd and he shall not want. In fact, he wants for nothing, nothing at all. He 39looks happily at the images of the Stations of the Cross with which he is so familiar: the Son of Man is carrying the cross, he falls to the ground exhausted, three times. And he saves his favourite image for last: Christ resurrected, beautiful and whole, luminous and full of vigour, reprimands those who searched for him in the tomb. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!”
Father Ismael enters and, despite the sunlit church interior, the lights are turned all the way up, the music becomes louder and the liturgy begins, with Antinucci listening in a reverential attitude, his forehead tilted slightly back, although he is paying scant attention, lost in his own thoughts. Only the Eucharist prayer, half an hour later, will shake him from his self-absorption as he prepares to receive Christ. He moves his lips, murmurs a few ritual words, keeps his thick eyelids more or less closed, and then stands up and joins the line to take Communion. And he will do so as he has done since his childhood, free of any conflict with the hermeneutics of the continuity of tradition and two millennia of teaching, just like before the Second Vatican Council, because this is not one of those churches with Communist priests, full of Tupamaros and leftists, one of those where not just the priest but any of his helpers may place the Host in the hands of the faithful. No. In the church of Las Esclavas del Sagrado Corazón, the Host will be given by the priest and placed directly in the believer’s mouth, to avoid any possible blemish to the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Antinucci stands up, walks towards the nave, his eyes lowered and his arms crossed over his chest, takes his place at the end of a line of three or four old ladies, advances slowly while keeping his distance, waits his turn and takes Communion. He returns to the exact spot where he was 40sitting before, kneels with