In Her Absence Read Free Page B

refined way and imitating the table manners of the gentry. Mario, who’d always been quick to blush, felt his own ludicrousness burning in his face as, beneath his father’s mocking eyes and the sidelong scrutiny of the customer sitting next to them, he tried to figure out which hand was supposed to hold the fork and which the knife. He didn’t succeed in cutting off a single bite of the pork chop, and when he finally managed to spear a bit of egg with the fork and tried to lift it to his mouth he ended up staining the good pants his mother dressed him in on Sundays and the holy days of obligation, and for trips.
    What a meager life I’d lived, he thought, if the cafeteria of the Jaén bus station struck me as a luxurious dining establishment. He’d tell Blanca about these things and she would laugh, but he didn’t know if she was touched by the thought of Mario’s primitive past, so different from her own childhood, or simply astounded by the existence of this picturesque way of life that was fundamentally absurd to any civilized person who took an interestin its peculiarities. The odd part of it, given her class background and the little she knew about the real life of people who were poor and working-class, was that Blanca’s political leanings were much farther to the left than his own. In 1986, the referendum on Spain’s entry into NATO had triggered one of the few truly bitter fights they’d ever had. Mario thought that a yes vote was both prudent and reasonable, while Blanca wore a pin bearing a large NO, collected signatures, attended meetings, and participated in demonstrations alongside people whose politics Mario considered loathsome: leftist extremists who were simultaneously in favor of pacifist disarmament and the terrorist attacks in northern Spain. When he saw how sad and dejected she was on the night of the vote, Mario couldn’t rejoice at the fact that his side had won. He felt guilty and even a little reactionary.
    As he ate his vichyssoise, Blanca had begun explaining something to Mario about a cultural project in which she might be offered some sort of minor role—as a translator, perhaps, or a costumedesigner—but he wasn’t paying much attention, though he pretended to be absorbed in what she was saying. What really interested him, what was keeping him absorbed, weren’t Blanca’s vague hopes for employment, which so often came to nothing, but her daily, miraculous presence, the slightly nasal sound of her voice, the way she moved her lips, the focused and serious attention with which her eyes rested on him as she told him about someone apparently very famous who had just arrived in the city and whom they would both very soon have the chance to meet in person. The name, Lluís Onésimo, seemed familiar to Mario but he didn’t want to ask anything more about the man for fear of seeming ignorant. Also, he’d just heard something from the television that had completely distracted him, or rather put him on guard.
    The anchorman was talking about a Frida Kahlo exhibition that had just opened in Madrid. When she’d seen the show advertised in the newspaper the day before, Blanca had fervently resolved that they must go: this was a unique retrospective,a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. With sorrow and remorse, he’d reminded her that it was nearly the end of the month and there wasn’t enough left in their budget to cover the cost of the trip, the hotel, and the restaurants in Madrid. The show would undoubtedly stay up for several months, he told her by way of appeasement, though he knew it was futile. Anyway, they’d do better to wait until summer vacation; this was the busiest time of year at his office and what he really felt like doing when he got home Friday afternoon was staying home and relaxing, not setting off on an exhausting trip to Madrid and coming back on Sunday night by the express train that got into Jaén at 7:00 Monday morning, which meant, as he knew from past