In the Midst of Winter

  The young woman glanced at the broken light and the dented, half-open trunk. She tried in vain to close it properly, while Richard went on about the insurance.

  “If you want we can call the police, but there’s no need. Here, take my card, it’s easy to find me.”

  She did not seem to hear him. Visibly agitated, she continued beating on the trunk with her fists until she was finally convinced she could not close it. Then she rushed back to the driver’s seat as quickly as the gusts of wind allowed, followed by Richard, who was insisting on giving her his contact details. She got into the Lexus without even looking at him, but he tossed his card into her lap just as she put her foot down on the accelerator without even closing the door, which banged into Richard, leaving him on his backside in the street. The vehicle turned the corner and disappeared. Richard struggled to his feet, squeezing the arm hit by the door. Conclusion: it had been a disastrous day; all he needed now was for the cat to die.

  Lucia, Richard, Evelyn

  Brooklyn

  By nine thirty that night, Richard, who was used to rising at five each morning to go to the gym, would normally have been in bed counting sheep, with Dois purring alongside him. But the day’s unfortunate events had left him in such turmoil that he prepared for the torment of insomnia by watching something mindless on TV. That would clear his worries. He had reached the obligatory sex scene, where the director had struggled with the script as desperately as the actors were struggling in bed to excite the viewer but instead merely freezing the action. “Come on, get on with the story!” he shouted at the screen, feeling nostalgic for the days when movies hinted at fornication by showing a door closing discreetly, a lamp being switched off, or a cigarette burning down in an abandoned ashtray.

  Just then his doorbell rang unexpectedly. Richard glanced at his watch: 9:40 p.m. Not even the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who for the past couple of weeks had been in the neighborhood trying to drum up possible converts, would risk canvassing so late. Puzzled, he went to the front door without switching on the outside light and peered through the glass. All he could see in the darkness was a muffled shape. He was going to retreat when a second loud ring startled him. Hastily he turned on the light and opened the door.

  Standing in the dimly illuminated entrance, framed by the darkness, was the girl in the parka. Richard recognized her at once. Hunched up, her head sunk between her shoulders and face covered by the hood, she looked even smaller than she had a few hours earlier. Richard murmured a “Yes?” but her only reply was to hand him the card he had thrown into her car, which contained his name, academic title, and office and home addresses. He stood there with the card in his hand, not knowing what to do for a minute that seemed to last forever. Eventually, becoming aware of the wind and snow sweeping in through the open door, he reacted and stepped to one side, inviting the girl in. Closing the door behind her, he studied her again in amazement.

  “Y-you didn’t have to come here. You need to call the insurance company directly,” he stuttered.

  She said nothing. Standing in the doorway without looking at him, she seemed like some insistent visitor from beyond the grave. Richard went on speaking about the insurance, but she did not react.

  “Do you speak English?” he finally asked.

  A few more seconds’ silence. Richard repeated his question in Spanish, because her size suggested she might be from Central America, although she could also be from Southeast Asia. She responded in an unintelligible murmur that sounded somewhat monotonous. Losing patience, Richard decided to ask her into the kitchen, where there was more light and they might be able to communicate. She followed him, eyes on the floor and stepping exactly where he did, as if balancing on a tightrope. In the kitchen, Richard pushed aside the papers on the table and offered her a seat on one of the stools.

  “I’m so sorry I rear-ended you, I hope you weren’t hurt,” he said.

  When again there was no reaction, he translated his comment into mangled Spanish. She shook her head. Richard continued with his despairing efforts to discover why she had come to his house so late at night. As the slight accident did not justify her terrified state, he surmised she was running away from someone or something.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  Struggling to pronounce every syllable, she managed to get out “Evelyn Ortega.” Feeling that the situation was getting beyond him, Richard realized he needed help in dealing with this inopportune visitor. Hours later, when he was able to analyze all that had happened, he was surprised that the only thing that had occurred to him was to call Lucia, since she of course spoke Spanish. In the time he had known her, she had proved to be a competent professional, and yet he had no reason to think she might be able to handle such an unforeseen event as this.

  THE SOUND OF THE TELEPHONE made Lucia Maraz jump. The only call she could possibly expect at ten o’clock at night would be from her daughter, Daniela, but this was Richard asking her to come urgently upstairs. After spending the whole day shivering, Lucia had finally gotten warm in her bed and had no intention of leaving her nest to respond to the peremptory call from the man who had not only condemned her to live in an igloo but the night before had ignored her plea for company in the storm. There was no direct access from the basement to the rest of the property; she would have to get dressed, struggle through the snow, and climb twelve slippery steps up to the front of the house. Richard was not worth all that effort.

  A week earlier they had argued because the water in the dog’s bowl was frozen in the morning, but not even this convincing proof had induced him to raise the thermostat. Richard had merely lent her an electric blanket that had not been used for decades. When she plugged it in, it emitted a cloud of foul smoke and blew one of the fuses. The cold was Lucia’s most recent complaint, but there had been others. At night she could hear a chorus of mice in the walls, which according to her landlord was impossible since the cats dealt with all the rodents, and so the noises must have come from rusty pipes or dry rot.

  “I’m sorry to bother you so late, Lucia, but I need you to come. I’ve got a serious problem,” Richard announced on the phone.

  “What sort of problem? Unless you’re bleeding to death, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “A hysterical Latin American woman has invaded my house, and I don’t know what to do with her. Maybe you could help. I can barely understand her.”

  “All right, get out a shovel and come and dig me out of here,” Lucia said, relenting, her curiosity aroused.

  A short while later, Richard, bundled up like an Inuit, had rescued his lodger and taken her and Marcelo upstairs to his house, which was almost as cold as the basement. Cursing how miserly he was when it came to heating, Lucia followed him to the kitchen, which she was familiar with from previous brief visits. Shortly after arriving in Brooklyn she had been there, intending to cook him a vegetarian meal, but Richard turned out to be hard to please. She considered vegetarianism an eccentricity of people who had never been really hungry, but nevertheless took great care in preparing his meal. Richard ate two platefuls, thanked her politely, and never returned the favor. This was when Lucia had been able to see how restricted her landlord’s way of life was. Among the few pieces of unremarkable furniture in dubious condition, pride of place went to a shiny grand piano. On Thursday and Saturday afternoons she could hear from her lair the sounds of Richard and three other musicians performing together for the sheer pleasure of playing. In her opinion, they were quite good, but she had no ear for music and next to no musical culture. She had waited several months for Richard to invite her to one of these afternoon sessions to hear the quartet, but the offer never came.

  Richard occupied only the first floor, and his bedroom was the smallest in the house, seeming more like a cell with bare walls and a tiny window. The living room appeared to be a stockroom for the printed word, while the kitchen, also piled high with books, was recognizabl
e as such thanks to a sink and an unreliable gas stove that had the habit of turning itself on without any human intervention and was impossible to fix because there were no spare parts for it anymore.

  THE PERSON RICHARD INTRODUCED as Evelyn Ortega was extremely short and was seated at the rough wooden table that served as both desk and dining space, her legs dangling from the stool. Ensconced in a garish yellow parka with the hood up and firefighter’s boots, she did not appear to be hysterical so much as stunned. She ignored the newcomer’s arrival, but Lucia went over and held out her hand, without letting go of Marcelo or taking her eyes off the cats, who were observing the dog closely, hackles raised.

  “Lucia Maraz. I’m Chilean, the tenant from the basement,” she said.

  A trembling childlike hand poked out of the yellow parka and feebly shook Lucia’s.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” said Lucia.

  “I bumped into the back of her car when I was returning from the vet’s. One of the cats was poisoned with antifreeze. I think she’s very scared. Can you talk to her? I’m sure you’ll understand her.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re a woman, aren’t you? And you speak her language better than I do.”

  Lucia addressed the young visitor in Spanish to find out where she came from and what had happened to her. The stranger woke from her catatonic state and pushed back the hood but did not raise her eyes from the floor. She was a very small, thin young woman, her face as delicate as her hands, her skin the color of pale pine, and her black hair coiled at the nape of her neck. Lucia guessed she must be a native Central American, possibly Maya, although the characteristics of the race—an aquiline nose, pronounced cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes—were not very prominent in her. On the principle that foreigners understand English if you shout at them loudly enough, Richard told her she could trust Lucia. In this case it worked, because the girl responded in a singsong voice that she was from Guatemala. She stammered so badly that she could barely string her words together; by the time she had finished a sentence it was hard to remember how it began.

  Lucia managed to understand that Evelyn had taken the car belonging to her employer, someone called Frank Leroy, without permission, while he was traveling and his wife, Cheryl, was taking a nap. With difficulty, the young Guatemalan added that after Richard had crashed into her she had been forced to abandon her plan of going home without mentioning what she had done. It was not Cheryl she was frightened of, but Frank Leroy; he was a vicious, dangerous character. Her mind in turmoil, she had driven all over the neighborhood trying to come up with a solution. The dented trunk would not shut properly and had even sprung wide open on a couple of occasions; she had been obliged to pull over and improvise tying it up with the belt from her parka. She had spent the rest of the afternoon and evening parked in different spots, but only stayed a short time to avoid drawing attention to herself. During one of these stops she finally noticed the card Richard had given her, and had come to his house as a last resort.

  While Evelyn remained seated on the kitchen stool, Richard took Lucia aside and whispered that their visitor either had mental problems or was drugged.

  “Why do you think that?” she asked, also in a whisper.

  “She can hardly speak, Lucia.”

  “Don’t you realize she has a bad stammer?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am! And besides, she’s terrified, poor thing.”

  “How can we help her?” asked Richard.

  “It’s very late, there’s nothing we can do now. How about if she stays here tonight, and tomorrow we take her back to her employers’ house and explain about the accident? Your insurance will pay for the damage. They’ll have no reason to object.”

  “Except that she took the car without permission. They’re bound to throw her out.”

  “We’ll see tomorrow. For now we have to calm her fears,” Lucia decided.

  The interrogation she gave the young girl cleared up some aspects of her relationship with her employers, the Leroys. Evelyn did not have fixed hours in their house: she in theory worked from nine to five, but in practice spent the whole day with the child she was looking after and even slept next to him so that she could attend to him if need be. In other words, she worked the equivalent of three normal shifts. According to Richard and Lucia’s calculations, she was paid much less in cash than she was entitled to. To them it seemed like forced labor or slavery, but this did not matter to Evelyn. More important was that she had somewhere to live and was safe. Mrs. Leroy treated her very well, and Mr. Leroy only occasionally gave her orders. The rest of the time he ignored her. He treated his wife and child in exactly the same way. He was a violent man and everyone in the house, especially his wife, trembled in his presence. If he found out she had taken the car . . .

  “Calm down, Evelyn, nothing’s going to happen to you,” Lucia told her.

  “You can sleep here. This isn’t as bad as you think. We’ll help you,” added Richard.

  “For now what we need is a drink. Do you have anything, Richard? Beer for example?” asked Lucia.

  “You know I don’t drink.”

  “I suppose you do have some weed. That would help. Evelyn is dead on her feet, and I’m dying of cold.”

  Richard decided this was not the moment to be a prig and brought a tin of weed brownies out of the fridge. A couple of years earlier, due to his ulcer and headaches, he had been given a prescription that allowed him to buy marijuana for medicinal purposes. After splitting one of the brownies in three, Richard and Lucia each took a piece and gave one to Evelyn Ortega to lift her spirits. Lucia thought it best to explain what was in the brownie, but the girl ate it on trust, without any questions.

  “You must be hungry, Evelyn. I’m sure that with all this confusion you haven’t eaten. We need something hot,” Lucia decided, opening the fridge. “There’s nothing here, Richard!”

  “I buy what I need for the week on Saturdays, but today I couldn’t go because of the snow and the cat.”

  Lucia remembered the soup, the remains of which were still in her basement apartment, but did not have the heart to go outside again, descend to the catacombs, and return balancing a heavy pot on the icy stairs. Scraping together what little she could find in Richard’s kitchen, she prepared toast with gluten-free bread and served it with mugs of lactose-free milk, while Richard strode up and down the kitchen muttering to himself, and Evelyn compulsively stroked Marcelo’s back.

  Forty-five minutes later, the three of them were relaxing in a pleasant daze in front of the lit fire. Richard was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, and Lucia lay down on a blanket, her head across his legs. This familiarity would normally never have happened, since Richard did not encourage physical contact, least of all on his thighs. For Lucia, this was the first time in months she had smelled a man and felt his warmth, the rough texture of a pair of jeans on her cheek, and the softness of an old cashmere cardigan within reach. She would have preferred to be in bed with him but blocked out that image with a sigh, resigned to enjoying him fully dressed while she imagined the remote possibility of embarking down the winding path of sensuality with him. I’m a bit dizzy, it must be the brownie, she decided.

  Evelyn was slumped on the only big cushion, with Marcelo on her lap, and looked as diminutive as a jockey. The piece of brownie she had eaten had had the opposite effect on her as it had on Richard and Lucia. While they relaxed with their eyes half-closed, struggling to stay awake, Evelyn began to pour out her tragic life story in stammering speech. It turned out she knew more English than it had at first seemed but hadn’t managed to get the words out because she had been too nervous. Now calmer, she was able to make herself understood with surprising eloquence in Spanglish, that mixture of Spanish and English that is the official language of many Latinos in the United States.

  Outside, the snow settled gent
ly on the white Lexus as Evelyn told them of her past. Over the next three days, as the storm wearied of punishing the land and dissolved far out to sea, the lives of Lucia Maraz, Richard Bowmaster, and Evelyn Ortega would become inextricably linked.

  Evelyn

  Guatemala, 1992–2008

  Green, an entire world of green, the buzzing of mosquitoes, the screeching of cockatoos, a murmur of reeds in the breeze, sticky fragrant ripe fruit, wood smoke and roasted coffee beans, constant heat, and moisture on her skin and in her dreams. This was how Evelyn Ortega remembered her small village, Monja Blanca del Valle. Brightly painted walls, textile looms, flowers and birds, color piled on color, a rainbow of hues. And everywhere, at all times, her grandmother, Concepcion Montoya, the most decent and hardworking Catholic woman, according to Father Benito, who knew everything because he was not only a Jesuit but a Basque, and proud of it, as he used to say with the irony typical of his homeland but that no one there seemed to appreciate. Father Benito had seen a lot of the world, and all of Guatemala. He knew the life the peasants led, because he was so deeply rooted in it. He would not have changed his own life for anything. He loved his community, his great clan, as he called it. Guatemala was the most beautiful country in the world, he used to say, the Garden of Eden blessed by God but mistreated by humanity, and he would add that his favorite village was Monja Blanca del Valle, which owed its name to the national flower, the whitest and purest of orchids.

  The priest had witnessed the massacre of indigenous peoples in the eighties, with its systematic torture, mass burials, villages reduced to ashes where not even domestic animals survived. He saw how the soldiers, their faces blackened to avoid being recognized, crushed all attempts at revolt, every spark of hope in other human beings as poor as they themselves, just to keep things as they had always been. Far from hardening him, this experience softened his heart. He overlaid the atrocious images of that past with the fantastic spectacle of the country he loved, with its infinite variety of flowers and birds, its landscapes of lakes, forests, and mountains, its cloudless skies. The villagers accepted him as one of their own, because he truly was. They said he was still alive thanks to the miraculous Virgin of the Assumption, Guatemala’s patron saint. What other explanation could there be, when it was rumored that he had hidden guerrilla fighters and they had heard him mention agrarian reform from the pulpit? For far less than that, others had had their tongues cut out and their eyes gouged from their sockets. The ever-present skeptics muttered that the Virgin had nothing to do with it: the priest must have been sent by the CIA, or protected by the narcos, or was simply an army informer. They never dared suggest any of this within his hearing, because the Basque Jesuit, despite having a fakir’s body, would have been able to break their nose with a single blow. No one had greater moral authority than this priest with the harsh foreign accent. If he respected Concepcion Montoya as a saint, it must have been for a reason, thought Evelyn, although she had lived, worked, and slept for so long beside her grandmother that to her she seemed a lot more human than divine.