Read Online Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel by Víctor del Árbol - Free Book Online Page A

now she saw it for what it really was: a cold, inhospitable, sterile place, a place imbued with the indifference of a great god who didn’t value the sacrifices of the tiny worshippers who served him.
    There was light behind Greta’s door.
    María knocked and opened without waiting for her to respond. The window blinds were half lowered, and a pleasant dim light illuminated the bookcase and desk with three chairs placed in a semicircle around it. In one corner, a small low table had two glasses, a thermos of coffee, and a bottle of water on it.
    Greta was standing, talking to a woman in her fifties who was a bundle of nerves.
    “What’s this important news?” asked María, leaving her coat on the rack.
    Greta’s expression was serious.
    “Let me introduce you to Pura. I think you’ll be interested in what she has to say.”
    Purificación was a tiny woman who seemed in over her head, with no aspirations beyond paying her rent. There wasn’t anything interesting about her. She didn’t even consider herself a woman. She simply saw herself as a beast of burden, carrying on her back five dirty kids and a cramped house, who bore life’s blows by cowering and looking at the tips of her holey espadrilles. She sat on the edge of a chair with her hands on her lap, squeezing a dirty handkerchief. Greta served her some coffee.
    “Why don’t you tell my colleague what you told me?”
    The woman started to talk about her husband. His name was Jesús Ramoneda.
    “He works as an informant for the police. Everyone knows it, so I don’t think I’m revealing much by telling you.”
    “That’s not a very common job ,” interjected María, intrigued.
    Pura looked at her with a slight sternness in her eyes.
    “My husband is not a common man.”
    She explained that her husband was incapable of running his own life. He beat her and the kids, and he drank too much. He often disappeared for days, sometimes even weeks. Purificación figured that he was cheating on her or going with whores, or that maybe he had run afoul of the law. That was his world, the underworld. But she said nothing, what could she say? Her world spanned a junk-filled living room, a filthy kitchen, and five constantly crying kids. She even wanted, with all her heart and soul, for him to leave her. At least, when he was gone, she could breathe freely.
    María listened and took notes. It sounded like the typical abuse case; the woman’s husband was a real son of a bitch, like so many others … And suddenly she felt ashamed and confused: like so many others. Was there really that much difference between what that poor woman was going through and what Lorenzo did to her? She picked up a cup of coffee and hid her gaze in it, as if that confluence of fates made her uncomfortable. She knew that Greta was watching her closely, but she pretended she hadn’t realized.
    “I think I get the idea,” she said, “but I don’t think we can do much to help you. Divorce is not legal here, and a woman leaving home is committing a crime. However, I can give you the address of a secret shelter where we send women in your situation.”
    She started to jot down the address, when Pura asked her to stop writing and looked at her very seriously.
    “A few days ago a plainclothes policeman came asking for him. He wasn’t one of the regulars; I’d never seen him before. He seemed very angry. He showed me a photograph of a girl that must have been about twelve and asked me if I had seen her around or if Ramoneda had ever mentioned her. I told him no, and he left angrily … Three days later two other agents came to see me. I did know them, they were from the Verneda station, and they often came by the house so that Ramoneda would give them information about the goings-on in the neighborhood. But they weren’t there to see him; they came to see me. They told me that something terrible had happened and that my husband was in the hospital. That he might die. Those men explained