Barcelona 03 - The Sound of One Hand Killing by Teresa Solana, Peter Bush Page A

in a very different mental world. Alícia’s friends felt envy rather than pity. They imagined her childless and without commitments, happily enjoying a life that was beyond their reach as married women.
    Reality was somewhat different. True enough she entered and departed relationships without having to explain herself to anybody, but at the end of the day she couldn’t get used to living by herself. The silence that dominated her flat, a silence too eloquent to be broken by the sound of television or radio, overwhelmed her and translated into attacks of anguish Alícia fought off by frequent visits to her refrigerator and bouts of cleaning that wiped her out. But she could hardly tell her girlfriends that, because she felt that if she confessed she couldn’t stand so much freedom they’d think she wasn’t a modern woman and would phone her even less.
    Dr Bou had been a stroke of luck, and for some time he’d been the focus of her nocturnal fantasies and kept herbrain busy with romantic dreams during the day. Dr Bou, the man known to her and the rest of his patients simply as Horaci, was her therapist, the man dedicated to healing her body and soul in this new and crucial stage of her life. She had met him through Abril, a work colleague on a six-month temporary contract, who was always buttering her up in the hope it would be made permanent, because Alícia was administrative head of the department where they worked. Abril was hooked on alternative therapies and always singing the praises of the centre for meditation that Dr Bou ran in Sarrià and all things you could learn there. One afternoon, they both went there after finishing at the office. It was a turning point in Alícia’s life.
    Dr Bou inspected her chakras and solemnly stated, with the hint of a smile on his lips, that her second chakra, Svadhisthana, wasn’t working harmoniously, and her seventh, the Sahasrara, was totally gummed up. As she hadn’t a clue what chakras were, the doctor embarked on a long explanation of how these were the body’s centres of energy, according to Vedic philosophy, and how, consequently, people’s physical and mental well-being depended on them working properly. Yoga and meditation, Oriental disciplines that went back thousands of years, would help her re-establish the proper functioning of her chakras, or so he said. What’s more, if she applied the principles of feng shui to the arrangement of her furniture at home, principles Abril had mentioned to her more than once, she’d corral positive energies and block out negative ones. They held short beginners’ courses in the centre and the results were spectacular, the doctor assured her, dazzling her with his dentist’s smile.
    Alícia left the centre in a spin. Apart from being charming, Horaci was sensitive and handsome. Beneath long eyelashes, his dark myopic eyes radiated magnetic power saturatedwith a mystical allure she found hypnotic and difficult to shake off. She immediately felt drawn to him and without a second thought signed up to the Zen Moments meditation centre and became a devoted pupil of Dr Horaci Bou.
    Horaci was personally responsible for the meditation classes, and Alícia was quick to turn him into the second love of her life. An impossible love, like all great loves, because the doctor was married and, as he confessed to her one day, he remained faithful to his wife. As she was so in love with him, Alícia was always at a loss to know what to say, and, whenever she opened her mouth, she realized what a fool she must seem. Nevertheless, one day when she’d stocked up on red wine at the supermarket and on incense and candles at the ethnic products shop, she found the strength to invite him to her flat with a view to seduction. However, her plan was thwarted.
    Dr Bou turned down her invitation in a highly intelligent manner. He apologized, saying that his marriage was going through a