Diego extends his fingers, gazes down at his hands, and thinks – or guesses – that Antinucci’s eyes are looking him up and down, scrutinizing him, trying to get inside his head.
“Strange, wouldn’t you say? Tell me something. Didn’t you say Sergio had convinced you to kidnap Santiago to ask his wife for money? So, when you realized your partner had taken off with the money Santiago had in his car, why didn’t you go ahead and ask the wife to pay the ransom? I mean, you were already at the ball, so you might as well dance. I don’t understand. Why hold the guy hostage for three days if not to demand a ransom?”
He extinguishes his cigarette on the floor, on the other side of the case; he treads on it, crushes it, grinds it down with the heel of his shiny leather moccasin. There is an awkward silence.
“Tell me the truth: did she pay up or not? Losada’s wife, I mean. Ursula, she’s called Ursula. Not a name you could forget. Maybe she kept it quiet to avoid getting into trouble with the law. Be honest with me. Do you know this woman or not?”
The lawyer speaks, he asks questions, holding an invisible melon in his hands.
Diego wants to say something, he hesitates, he keeps it in.
Let’s just pause for a moment: there’s a lot to explore in that indecision. What’s happening to Diego? Fear, insecurity? It seems as if, for some reason, he can’t speak or, if he could, he wouldn’t know what version to tell his lawyer. Antinucci removes his dark glasses with a slow, pompous, 14theatrical movement, places them on top of the cartapacio, his opaque gaze fixing on a point somewhere on Diego’s face, and Diego feels an almost physical pressure between his eyes and nose. He sees that the lawyer is looking at him through narrowed eyes, like two slits.
“Another thing I don’t understand is why the police didn’t find a weapon in the place you were holed up with Santiago Losada. Am I supposed to believe you and Sergio were unarmed when you kidnapped this guy? I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Antinucci clicks his tongue, grimaces lopsidedly and continues to stare at Diego, who avoids his gaze. For a moment the world retreats, the visiting shed retreats. Diego feels sick.
“You’re not telling? I don’t care. It’s your business, nothing to do with me. This case won’t go any further: no custodial sentence, that’s what the committal document will say. Within a couple of years the judge will issue a ruling; maybe he’ll dismiss it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Given the state of the legal system in this country… You need to get ready because you’ll be out this week. A few days and, God willing, you’ll be back on the street. Before that, they’ll take you to court for a routine hearing.”
“A hearing? Who with?”
“Ah, good, so now you talk. The hearing is with Losada’s wife. With Ursula, Ursula López. Pretty name, wouldn’t you agree? I like the sound of it for some reason. No, it won’t be a problem. Like I told you, she said she never received a ransom demand from you. I still have my doubts, but if you confirm that in front of the judge… Now just fill out the forms, sign the documents. Here. And here.”
And what can he say to the lawyer? That he had a weapon and he can’t explain how the revolver disappeared from 15the shack where they were holding Santiago? That he asked Ursula for a ransom and the two of them ended up forming a strange partnership? That she offered him money not to release her husband but to do away with him? Nobody would believe that of the wife of a businessman like Losada, and Diego has no intention of accusing her. Ursula was good to him, and when he gets out he’s going to look her up and thank her.
He tries not to think, he tries not to feel the pressure of Antinucci’s eyes between his brows. He raises his head, avoiding the scalpel gaze. He looks at the ceiling of the shed, at the walls, at the people.
The prisoners’ wives are still arriving, with that stunned look – resigned, humiliated, freezing cold. The shed already smells of fried dough balls and damp clothes and houses with no shower. They settle down, occupy the chairs, drag them from one table to another, drink mate and talk loudly in their shrill voices.
Over there, next to the door, the policeman is talking on his phone, mumbling, laughing, still picking his teeth: talking, spitting and picking away.
Diego opens his mouth, just a little at first. “In a few days, you said?”
“That’s what I said. You can’t complain about my work.”
“I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”
“You’ll be able to pay me very soon, Diego. You’ll hear from me straight away, today or tomorrow.”
Diego feels a shiver at the nape of his neck, a queasiness in his stomach, but now all that matters is to get out. A month inside, one month. He looks at the yard, the piles of dry leaves that the end of autumn has blown in from the woods. Santiago’s wife lied when she said he hadn’t demanded a 16ransom, she lied because she’s a good person. But still, it doesn’t fit together, he feels confused, he senses that there are guilty people and innocent ones in this story, and they don’t match those who are really guilty and innocent.
17
Many years earlier
She’s just a hungry, frightened girl, just a little girl standing in the darkest part of the corridor, her back pressed against the wall, her eyes closed, frozen. Her forehead, neck and hairline are beaded with sweat, her breathing is agitated, like when she runs or when she jumps rope at school, and her hands are trembling slightly. She’s just a girl and it isn’t an easy decision but she’s hungry, she’s always hungry. Finally she moves, she bends down, she noiselessly removes her patent leather shoes with their silver buckles; very slowly she places them on the floor and advances in silence, her white socks sliding across the waxed parquet, a little further, then she hesitates, stops in front of the door, listens, carefully pushes open the swing door and peers round.
From the threshold she observes the familiar space, the large cheerful room, the sun filtering between the curtains, light bouncing off the oak table; she runs her eyes over the cupboards, the spice jars, the fridge. She looks at the fridge. She imagines what’s inside and her mouth waters. But she is also alert, she knows the housekeeper is taking a siesta in the servant’s bedroom, next to the kitchen. She listens to the woman’s rasping, deepening snores.
18She’s a hungry girl but her fear is powerful, she hesitates before deciding to desecrate the comfortable domestic order of the kitchen, to enter the forbidden territory, the dangerous geography, to enter a world that at once beckons her in and shuts her out, a world watched over by the housekeeper, the white-aproned woman who is asleep in the next room.
She thinks about food day and night, when she wakes up and when she falls asleep, before sitting at the table, as she eats what the housekeeper or her father has put on her plate, and while she finishes the small portions and gets up, her cravings scarcely dented, still thinking about food. She thinks about it while she’s at school, while she’s watching television, while she and her sister, Luz, are playing with their dolls. Luz is thin and is allowed to eat as much as she likes, but she barely even touches what she is served. Her sister is thin and her father says she’s beautiful, just like her mother. But as he says this he looks not at Luz but at her, and she feels right then that her body occupies too much space.
She pushes a little more and enters, she’s afraid but she’s also so hungry, she hears the deep snoring and takes courage, takes one step and then another, then halts, alert to the loud, regular breathing; she decides, her stomach instructs her brain, she crosses the kitchen in slow steps, her toes resting gently, lightly on the floor, first one foot and then the other; two more steps and she’s standing in front of the fridge, her hand moves of its own accord, reaches out, approaches the handle, touches it