A Million Drops Read online

  Still staring at Gonzalo, the stranger mopped his shaved head with a handkerchief.

  Gonzalo approached. “Excuse me. Have we met?”

  The man took his credentials from his pocket, flashed them, and nodded heavily.

  “So what are you doing here?”

  Alcázar stared at him, unruffled. “It’s about your sister, Laura.”

  The name rang a bell in Gonzalo’s mind, like a mild irritation long forgotten. His sister had disappeared off the map more than ten years ago. He hadn’t seen her since.

  “What did the lunatic do now?”

  Alcázar tossed his cigarette down and ground it out, rotating his heel back and forth. His hooded eyes, buried beneath tangled gray brows, bored into Gonzalo.

  “Killed a man and then committed suicide. And by the way, the lunatic was my partner.”

  The powdery sand blowing in from the beach dusted the chairs and table on the balcony in a soft film, and the white walls gave off a suffocating heat.

  Siaka studied the sea through the window, calm and indifferent. The woman snoozed, facedown, cheek smashed into the pillow, mouth slightly open and slobbering, sweaty burgundy-colored hair plastered to her forehead. She was solidly built and rosy-cheeked, with a nose piercing, one of those tiny diamonds that looked like a shard of glass. The white marks left by her bikini called attention to the redness of her skin, scorched by the sun. Tourists never learned; the second they hit the beach, they sprawled on their towels like lizards, as if the sun was going to run out. Siaka wriggled cautiously from under the arm over his pelvis and peeled himself from her skin, sticky as marmalade. She’d let out a horselike bray before she came and then flashed him an obscene, lascivious look. “How did you learn how to do all those things?” she’d asked. “I was born knowing.” She smiled. Siaka was convinced she hadn’t even understood, and then she’d fallen asleep like a baby with a pacifier.

  He dressed silently, leaving his shoes for last, and rummaged through her purse until he found her wallet, which contained a thick wad of cash; she also had an expensive-looking watch and a cell phone. He took her passport, too—American passports brought in a lot of money—but then, after thinking about it for a moment, placed it back in her bag, along with her cell phone. No doubt Daddy could wire her money from some bank in New Jersey or wherever she was from, but losing a passport was more complicated. Dozens of women named Suzanne, Louise, and Marie came from the United States and wherever else in search of the vacation of their life, something to remember on long cold nights in Boston and Chicago. Russians, Chinese, Japanese, they weren’t bad, but he preferred the Yanks. They had a certain naïveté he found almost endearing and were satisfied with little more than their boyfriends gave them back home. Plus they were generous. No cheap hostels or quickies in the back of a rental car for them. They brought him back to their hotels, and Siaka had a thing for five-stars: the cocktail shakers laid out and waiting, the expensive embroidered sheets, the thick robes and bath salts and clean carpet. But what he liked best were the flags. The flags flying at five-star hotels were always shiny and new.

  You couldn’t understand what the so-called first world really was without seeing those flags from the balcony of an oceanfront five-star hotel. When tourists asked him where he was from in their flustered, lascivious voices, he lied to them, and it made no difference. To most people, Africa was an ocher-colored stain in the middle of nowhere. Its borders were indistinguishable, its countries all the same. A place of misfortune, famine, and war. A few tearful stories, which they listened to with looks of pity, reaching their long fingers across the table of some expensive restaurant, made them feel superior, but also guilty. Siaka would change his tone, then; he liked to wow them with his knowledge of African music, to explain how to play the mbira’s metal tines, mounted on a hardwood soundboard—an instrument from Zimbabwe, like him. Or he’d tell them about Mukomberanwa, one of his country’s most distinguished sculptors. And then their pity turned to admiration, and over the course of dinner, as the empty wine bottles accumulated, their hands or feet would slip under the table and onto his crotch, the age-old urge to possess a man surfacing once more. They would ask, with tipsy, unfocused eyes, if it was true what they said about black men, that they were huge—because of course to be black you had to be endowed with great masculinity. This was what they thought, and this was what Siaka offered. He was, in fact, well endowed, and at nineteen he had real stamina. And plans for the future.

  Siaka walked out of the room and put his shoes on in the hall, slipping the cash inside. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes hotel security would search him, especially if they remembered his face.

  He had no trouble getting out onto the street and hailing a cab.

  “Where to, sir?”

  Siaka smiled in satisfaction. He liked being called sir; he might be black, and not have papers, but expensive clothes and designer sunglasses made you seem whiter. And as far as papers went, the only ones that people truly cared about were tucked into his shoe.

  “Do you take U.S. dollars?” he asked, holding out a hundred. Money makes you less illegal.

  Gonzalo Gil’s house, in a luxury development on a hilltop overlooking the sea, was almost hidden by a high stone wall. Laughter could be heard over the wall, and the sound of splashing in the pool. From the window of his taxi, Siaka watched a catering van pull up. The tall, dark elegant woman who came out to meet it must have been his wife. Siaka tried to remember her name, but all that came to him was the phrase “conceited bitch.” From what he knew, the lawyer had two kids: a son about Siaka’s age and a little girl. On a couple of occasions he’d seen them getting onto a school bus nearby.

  “Hey, the meter’s running, and at this rate it’s going to make me rich.”

  “If I call you in, say, half an hour, will you come pick me up? I’ll give you a good tip.”

  Siaka walked the length of the wall, inhaling the scent of orchids. That and the smell of fresh-cut grass reminded him of a Fitzgerald novel and, in a way, of something far darker that had happened at his school when he was little. He stopped in front of a few workers who were getting rid of some graffiti, and smiled. This must have been a gold mine for them. Every three or four days they’d show up to remove insults aimed at Gonzalo and threats against his beautiful wife and cherubic kids. One of the men stood staring at him. Siaka waved casually and the guy went back to what he was doing. Just in case, he crossed the street and strolled by the neighboring properties. Some people sure knew how to live, that much was clear, and it had nothing to do with luck.

  Siaka leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. He adjusted his sunglasses and closed his eyes, allowing the smoke to float out from among his white teeth.

  “Happy birthday, Solicitor.”

  2

  Gonzalo looked up and compared the address on the building with the one on the paper he’d been given at court. Among his sister’s belongings had been a key to the apartment where she’d been living for the past few months. On the building was a faded plaque with arrows radiating out like rays of sun, and the words PROPERTY OF THE MINISTRY OF HOUSING. You could guess when it had been built by a tangle of cables that would terrify even the most experienced electrician. The narrow lobby was full of mildew stains, the light wasn’t working, half of the mailboxes had been ripped out, and those that remained either had their locks jimmied or their cheap sheet metal fronts bent back. Without much hope, Gonzalo glanced around for an elevator that didn’t exist and then, resigned, eyed the steep spiral staircase.

  By the time he reached the top floor, sweat ran down his back. He took a minute to catch his breath before pulling the key from his pocket and slipping it into the keyhole of the only door. It opened with the sound of bolts clicking. The stench of dry sweat and black tobacco welcomed him as he felt around the wall for the light switch and flipped it. A lamp with no shade turned on at the end of the long hall
way.

  The place had almost no natural light. The living room was small, its terrazzo floor sticky, the walls bare. There was hardly any furniture: a chest of drawers, a shabby armchair, an old TV. On a coat stand hung a robe with cigarette burns on the sleeve. Gonzalo tried to picture his sister smoking and drinking herself to oblivion, the blinds pulled, immersed in darkness.

  To the left, he saw a small desk with papers, books, and magazines piled high. And empty beer cans and cigarette butts. A framed wedding photo lay on the floor, its glass broken. Gonzalo crouched to pick it up and wiped away a footprint to get a better look. The day Laura got married, her eyes had flicked side to side in fear, like a disoriented swallow fluttering wildly, searching for him among the guests gathered at the church. She wore the same look in this photo and seemed to be shrinking from Luis’s arm, which encircled her waist. His ex-brother-in-law looked young. Gonzalo had always liked Luis, it was a shame things turned out the way they did, ten months earlier. He would have liked to keep in touch.

  Gonzalo went into the kitchen. It smelled of rotting food. A calendar several years out of date hung from a hook beside a stopped clock. The furniture’s wood joints were dark with gunk, and on the Formica table sat a dirty plate and cup. It was as though Laura had just stepped out for a moment and would be right back to finish her lunch. This was where she had shot herself in the stomach. The police found her with a gun in her hand. Not her police-issue weapon, which had been confiscated when her son was killed and Laura was forced to take medical leave for psychological counseling. No one had foreseen the possibility that she might have another gun at home.

  The coroner insisted it had been a painless death; they’d found barbiturates and alcohol in her system, which Laura had no doubt ingested before shooting herself. Gonzalo had been allowed to see only his sister’s face, but beneath the sheet he caught a glimpse of the sutures running from her belly button to her trachea. Without its organs, Laura’s body had deflated like an empty wineskin.

  It didn’t strike Gonzalo as a very pleasant death. A trail of dry blood wound its way from the door to under the table, where she’d sought refuge like a dying dog. The large pool had left a dark stain on the old linoleum floor, along with the vestiges of the paramedics’ futile attempts to bring her back to life: latex gloves, bandages, syringe caps, and an IV. When the police arrived, music had been blaring. They said they didn’t know what it was, and even became angry when Gonzalo kept asking, as though it didn’t matter. But it did, of course it did. Gonzalo saw the CD case on the stereo. Laura had chosen Shostakovich’s Symphony Number 7, Leningrad, to silence the boom of the gun and the sound of her own agonized cries so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. Their mother detested Shostakovich; perhaps that was why Laura had picked him.

  He sat down on a chair and took in the surroundings, as strange and unfamiliar to him as the person he’d seen—or what was left of her—on a cold metal gurney in the morgue. His sister’s death, no matter how much he wanted to feel it, had only had a vague effect on him, the kind of discomfort you feel at the death of an acquaintance or a distant relative you know nothing about and have no ties to. A distant cloud on a sunny day. But the longer he sat there, the more dust was raised, bringing back memories of a childhood in which Laura was the only touchstone Gonzalo had.

  Walking into her bedroom, he felt embarrassed, which was silly given the circumstances. No one cared about Laura’s bras and panties strewn all over the room, the unmade bed, or the smell of sex and booze. On the nightstand he could see traces of cocaine. Laura’s finger marks were still visible in the crystal dust, as were those of another person—perhaps one of her lovers. He sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window, which opened onto a balcony overlooking the beach. This was what she saw every morning when she woke up: one strip of sky, another of land, and the sea. Maybe the sight of it provided some sort of solace when she opened her eyes. Perhaps at night she looked out at the stars and breathed in the salty humid air, maybe with her beloved Bach playing in the background, or Wagner—another composer their mother hated and therefore Laura adored. In the mornings, when the sun rose, maybe she swam in the sea (she’d always been a better swimmer than him, he recalled), out to the buoy floating in the deep, and then turned, exhausted, and swam back. Or perhaps she just sat with her arms and chin resting on the rusty railing, smoking and drinking the hours away, thinking about her son.

  What kind of brother had he been? The kind of brother who knew nothing about his sister. He remembered a conversation he once had with Laura. Gonzalo had been fourteen years old at the time and had a project to do for school. They were supposed to make a collage that told the story of a relative’s life. Without thinking twice, Gonzalo chose his father and asked Laura to help him collect photos and objects that had belonged to him: a strip of cloth from his vest, a button, a box of the brand of matches he used to light his enormous cigars. The idea was for the picture of his father, dressed as a Soviet officer, to be surrounded by a saintlike aura composed of these objects. Gonzalo attended a school run by Claretian monks and knew that they’d see this as an unacceptable act of defiance, knew that he’d be suspended. But he didn’t care.

  “Did you love him?” he remembered his sister asking, as he worked on the collage. He was scribbling verses from Mayakovsky’s poem to Lenin, some of the words unfinished, as though he was too impatient to complete them and needed only to copy them down in part to mark their presence, mixing Spanish phrases in with long paragraphs in Russian.

  “Love who?” he asked, distracted.

  “Our father.”

  Gonzalo looked up at his sister in surprise. How old was Laura back then? Twenty-one? Twenty-two, maybe? She was already a self-assured young woman who traveled all over and had friends her mother deemed undesirable but Gonzalo found interesting and fun. They read Jack Kerouac and listened to Bob Dylan and let him smoke when his mother wasn’t around.

  “Yes, of course I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? He was our father.”

  “How do you love someone you don’t know? Just because he’s your father?” His sister flashed him a look that lasted only an instant, but it was a look he’d always remember: a combination of pain and incomprehension and sorrow.

  Her question and her look were still here, in this apartment where there was no longer anything for Gonzalo to do. He’d come in the hopes of finding some sort of connection to the past, but it was pointless. He had nothing in common with the woman who had lived and died here.

  Gonzalo was getting ready to leave when he noticed the armoire, its door ajar. On the left side hung Laura’s shirts, dresses, and trousers; the right side was filled with empty plastic hangers, all lined up in a row. There was an industrial-size garbage bag on the bottom shelf. Vaguely curious, he opened it partway, and suddenly his eyes filled with the excited glimmer of a child on Christmas Eve. His mother’s bomber jacket!

  He opened the bag all the way and spread the jacket out on the bed. How long had it been since he’d seen it? At least thirty years. The leather had cracked and darkened, but it was clear that Laura had made an effort to preserve it. You could still make out the insignia—rotor blades over the hammer and sickle—of the Soviet Aviation School on the patch sewn onto the right side, the flag of the Spanish Republic below it. The sheepskin lining around the neck was filthy but still as springy as Gonzalo remembered from childhood. Slightly self-conscious, he tried it on. Back then the sleeves had been far too long and he’d almost tripped over the waistband at the bottom, which was also wool. Now it was impossible to fasten it; he feared the zipper would break. Gonzalo sniffed the wool—still redolent of the conditioning oil Laura had applied—and was transported back to 1968, 1969, even 1970, when he and Laura used to pretend they were fighter pilots. Gonzalo always asked to wear the jacket, and his mother always gave in on the condition that he’d be careful not to let it get scratched. He didn’t a
lways manage, and if ever he fell down a slope, defeated by Laura’s enemy fire (she was always a German Messerschmitt, and Gonzalo an RAF Spitfire, so in theory she was the one who should have been defeated, but she obstinately refused to give up), and the bomber jacket got dirty or a bit scratched, Gonzalo would burst into tears, partly in anticipation of the spanking his mother would give him, but also because he loved that jacket more than anything else in the world. He’d given it up for lost a long time ago and never guessed that Laura had saved it.

  Eyes still twinkling with excitement, he came upon something in one of the inside pockets: an envelope containing what appeared to be an antique—an old silver object with a cover and catch. Still wearing the jacket, Gonzalo sat down on the foot of the bed to examine it more carefully. It was crudely engraved on one side, as though it had been done with a knife or some other sharp object. The lettering was worn and Gonzalo had to hold it all the way up to his glasses to make out part of it. It seemed to be a woman’s name: I, then maybe M or N—he wasn’t sure—and an A at the end. The rest had completely worn away.

  He fiddled with the cover and the latch gave, springing open to reveal the very faded sepia image of a young woman. You could hardly make out the right side of her face. Her deep, serious eyes contrasted with her partially visible mouth, which seemed to be smiling. It might have been a studio portrait: You could see part of a curtain behind the chair on which she sat with her legs modestly crossed. Though it was hard to be entirely sure, there seemed to be a little girl on her lap. All that could be seen was a small black shoe with a buckle and the frill of a skirt, and above that a braid with a bow.