Victor del Arbol - The Sadness of the Samurai: A Novel by Víctor del Árbol

took a long drag on the cigarette and brushed aside her wet bangs. She looked at her fingernails, as if searching for some imperfection in her immaculate manicure.
    “Do you think about him?”
    María shook her head emphatically.
    “No. Of course not. We can’t think about all the people we’ve accused or defended in court. We do our job, and we move on.”
    “But the case of Inspector Alcalá wasn’t like the others, and we both know it.”
    Greta was right. Their lives had not been the same since. Now they were prestigious lawyers and had their own firm on the Passeig de Gracia.
    “Things have gone well for us since then,” added Greta with a deliberate look. “Haven’t they?”
    María avoided that interrogatory gaze. With the excuse of looking through her purse for pills for her headache, she pulled her hand away from Greta’s.
    “Yes, things have gone well for us. We have a nice house, a nice car, we vacation in the summer, go skiing in the winter…” She let the list hang in the air, as if she had forgotten something important.
    “And we have each other,” added Greta pointedly.
    All of a sudden the bells of Santa María sounded the quarter hour. A flock of pigeons took off under the rain, and María shifted her gaze, letting it wander. To her right there was an indigent in the middle of the plaza of El Fossar de les Moreres, with his hands stuck into the pockets of a long, dirty, gray coat, looking alternately left and right. He took a few steps toward one side. He stopped. He looked around and retraced his steps, scratching his few days’ growth of ashy beard, without deciding on one side or the other.
    María noticed him. There was something about him that was familiar.
    “Look at that beggar. He is watching us out of the corner of his eye.”
    Greta watched the homeless man. He didn’t seem any different to her than the others milling about.
    “We should go home. It’s getting late. And my head’s hurting again.”
    “When are you going to go to the neurologist?”
    “Don’t be a nag, Greta. It’s nothing. It’s just a migraine.”
    Greta reminded her of the times she had gotten dizzy in the last month, her sudden blackouts, and those spots that every so often spattered her iris like lightning bugs flying before her eyes, fogging her vision.
    “All that is just a migraine?”
    “I’ll find some time to go to the doctor, I promise,” answered María, looking behind her. The beggar was watching her. Slowly, he lifted his hand and waved at her. From a distance María thought that she even heard him say her name. Again she felt almost certain that she knew that poor man. But she couldn’t place his face or associate it with any concrete identity or memory. “Can we leave? I don’t like it here.”
    *   *   *
     
    That night, the telephone rang three times before María picked it up and left it on the cradle without answering. She was in her home office, reviewing an eviction sentence for which she was preparing an appeal. No more than five seconds passed, but when she brought the receiver to her ear all she heard was the hum of the line. Not giving it any thought, she hung up and continued going over her work.
    Ten minutes later the phone rang again. This time she picked it up on the first ring.
    “Yes?”
    “Do you mind explaining why you didn’t answer the phone before?”
    María was paralyzed at the sound of that voice. Confused, it took her a few seconds to react.
    “Lorenzo…?”
    A weak chuckle was heard on the other end of the line.
    “You sound like you’ve heard a voice from beyond the grave. Just because you haven’t wanted to hear from me in all this time doesn’t mean I died.”
    “What do you want?” asked María very slowly, suspicious. It had been more than three years since she’d heard from Lorenzo, and hearing his voice again stirred up old hurts that would always dwell in the depths of her being.
    “I’m in Barcelona. I thought we should get