Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [185]
But Rocío’s tone soon changed, perhaps as a reaction to the surprising calm she observed on the map of Silvia’s face.
‘I want you to know I won’t allow your relationship to continue. I’d crush you first. I can ruin your life, you’ve no idea how far I can go.’
As she said this, she pressed her thumb against the marble table of Delicacies, the café in Catro Camiños, whose display window had until then reflected Leica’s cheerful greeting with one of his Mastroianni smiles.
‘I’ve the means to do it.’
Are you married, Leica? Why didn’t you tell me? No. She wasn’t going to question him. Rocío’s directness made her feel fragile again. Silvia often thought about Medusa’s face. She also felt as if she’d been torn inside. She lived half a life and had noticed since being a girl that living a whole life was forbidden people like her in this patch of world. On days of sadness, she viewed the bay as a pool in which mullets fed on the dreams eyes threw into the sea.
‘I’ve the means to do it. To crush you.’
All Silvia had was her invisible mending. Even feeling love was a problem. She realised one side of her, the enlightened part, had been deceiving the other, which was in shade, since she’d met Leica. And both sides knew it. Though they’d decided to carry on. To live that moment of truth. To go to the lighthouse, make love under the vanes of light, with the music of the sea in the background.
No. She wasn’t going to use a dentist’s pliers to force an unnecessary confession out of him.
When Rocío used words to strike her, in her fragile state, she glimpsed a way out. The day the civil servant came to pick up the cape, she said she hadn’t quite finished yet, but she knew her price. Her papers. The papers she’d been refused a year earlier for being the daughter of who she was. This was her price for the invisible mending. A passport and a permit to work abroad.
‘Are you pregnant?’ asked the woman.
Silvia felt like a character in a radio serial that would never be broadcast. There were thousands of women trying to leave for this reason, because they were pregnant and unmarried or single mothers.
Seeing she remained silent, the civil servant said, ‘You’re not the first woman to be pregnant or the first to want to leave. But in your case,’ she added, ‘it’ll be easy. You’ve Rocío on your side. Permission granted.’
And still he went on about his publicity dream.
When the advert was ready and the great photo had been mounted, they’d go together to look at the window of Hexámetro and to meet Mr Bendai. The shop owner and future sponsor would thus be able to see how much more beautiful she was in person. And he had the vague hope, though he didn’t say this, that he’d give her a present. Possibly even a television.
She agreed, said she wanted to look at the advert, though she’d be embarrassed to be in the shop window for all Coruña to see. She imagined Miss Elisa standing there, proclaiming to all and sundry in a loud voice, ‘But I know that woman! And she doesn’t even have a fridge or a hoover! All she’s got is a little sewing machine you carry on your head.’
They laughed. Imagined being together, holding hands, in front of the shop window. Mr Bendai waving to them from inside with his enterprising smile. This was the adjective Leica used to describe the shopkeeper’s smile. Enterprising. Each smile was different and had to be described differently. The art of the photographer, like the great publicist he was, was to give each smile the correct photographic description.
Silvia’s smile was that of the woman advertising electrical appliances. He liked it. A hidden smile hanging in the shop window. Happiness within reach. The future exists and it’s in the window. Next they’d go to Paris. Live there for a while. Breathe another environment.
‘Your smile is deceptive,’ she said.
‘Deceptive but true.’
She was the one who suggested going again. Making love next to Hercules Lighthouse. In Leica’s car. On short