A Crack in the Wall Read Free Page B

the first time her mother has been a witness to these events, and that image – of Francisca hugging her bare legs on the chair, laughing, drinking beer straight from the bottle, passing it to some man, letting another one stroke her knee – is something she cannot transmit to Pablo in any other words than these: I can’t take her any more.
    Half an hour later the three of them are sitting around the table. They’ve hardly sat down when the telephone rings. Laura, still red-eyed, looks at them both: first at Pablo, then at Francisca, then at Pablo again. He knows that look, knows it to be his wife’s way of declaring, without recourse to speech, that she is not going to be the one to get up and answer the phone. Francisca holds her mother’s gaze, to Pablo’s dismay, because he knows that it irritates Laura even more. He can detect his wife’s annoyance in the tension of her neck muscles, in the way she moves her food around the plate without eating any of it, but above all the anger shows in the blueish vein that stands out on her forehead, just above the left eye. Pablo gets to his feet and goes to answer the phone; he knows that this gesture won’t improve the atmosphere, but he doesn’t want it worsened by a ringing telephone, left unanswered. Just before he gets to the receiver, it stops ringing anyway.
    Pablo returns to his seat and makes an effort at starting a conversation. Hurriedly he tries to think up a subject, but nothing comes as strongly to mind as Marta’s mole and Jara’s shoes. Further brain-wracking turns up a girl injeans, white T-shirt and black trainers. He can’t talk about any of these things to his wife or daughter so, opting for a blend of truth and fiction, he invents a lie about his underground journey that evening, how the trains stopped between two stations and how the confinement brought on a panic attack in one passenger. He describes the tension on that man’s face exactly as he sees it etched now on Laura’s face opposite him, but leaving out the blue vein above her left eye because that would give him away. Other details he invents, such as the badly polished shoes, tied with a double knot. He tells how the man even tried to open a window to throw himself out and how several passengers had to hold him back. He resists the temptation to claim to have been one of those passengers – he knows the limits of his own lie – saying instead that they were a man and a girl who had a strange mole on her leg, close to the knee. Pablo Simó tells his story with such gusto that you might think he, and not the man with claustrophobia, was the drama’s real protagonist. But neither Laura nor Francisca are interested enough in his anecdote to do more than look up at him occasionally from their plates.
    â€œPass the salt,” says his daughter, and as he does so Laura’s eyes fill with tears.
    How must his wife have interpreted “pass the salt” for her eyes to well up like that? Or what interpretation has she given to the fact of his passing the salt to his daughter? Pablo Simó doesn’t know. The phone rings again and he quickly says to Francisca, “Can you get it?”
    As soon as the girl stands up, Laura warns her:
    â€œIf it’s for you, hang up straight away – you’re banned from using the phone for a week.”
    â€œThen someone else can answer,” says Francisca, sitting down.
    Laura shoots Pablo a pleading look. He’d like to oblige her by doing whatever it is her eyes are demanding of him, but he isn’t sure exactly what that is. Even though he knows that it isn’t to do with him answering the telephone, he moves back his chair and prepares to do just that. The telephone rings twice more then stops. Pablo returns to his seat; the three continue to eat, in silence; for a long time the only sound is the scraping of cutlery against china or water being poured into a